11 ms·

I got covid in early 2021, and got the J&J shot at the end of the year. In both cases I had a fever, except the J&J lasted two days vs actual covid that lasted

I got covid in early 2021, and got the J&J shot at the end of the year. In both cases I had a fever, except the J&J lasted two days vs actual covid that lasted one. I have not been sick with covid since then. I have never had a flu shot, and also never had the flu in over thirty years. I just don't see why I should get myself sick to risk not getting sick(er)? Anytime I mention this people call me antivax. I was never skeptical about taking shots until the way the government handled covid. There is no chance I will take something that hasn't been thoroughly tested and proven to actually work the way our standard immunization schedule does.

jewayne 3y ago
As somebody who was in the Phase 3 clinical trial for the Pfizer vaccine in 2020, I was never skeptical about the intelligence of my fellow Americans until I saw the way we handled covid. It's an article of faith in Team Hoax that "COVID vaccines will eventually turn out to be bad", even though unvaccinated people dropped like flies throughout all of 2021 (forever the year of the Herman Cain Awards). 400,000 deaths that were preventable by the vaccines. smh.
- ifyoubuildit 3y ago
  As one of those unvaccinated people that got covid in 2021, I wonder if you're aware of what your actual odds of dying from covid were at the time. Bonus points if you break it down by age. I'm not sure what probability dropping like flies equates to, but I think it's probably something pretty far off from reality. Also, whatever your position on any of this, the whole Herman Cain Awards thing is not something to be proud of participating in. Even if you buy the line that not taking the shots was some sort of major crime against your fellow humans (pretty hard to argue at this point, but for the sake of argument) HCA was disgusting.
  - jewayne 3y ago
    I maintain that the unnecessary death of 400,000 people due to misinformation was more disgusting, but hey, to each his own.
    - ifyoubuildit 3y ago
      The unnecessary death of 400k people for any reason is indeed disgusting (even if those 400k were heavily weighted towards people who were at or beyond life expectancy, it's still tragic). That doesn't make it any more admirable for smug redditors to celebrate tragedy. Do you really find that to be a compelling argument?
      - jewayne 3y ago
        Whether you call it celebrating or properly recognizing, I feel they were doing a public service. Go back and read it, and you will see a distinct pattern, repeated literally hundreds of times. The same arc of (often vile) right-wing memes, conspiracy theories, and bravado, giving way to "tested positive, COVID is no joke", then to "calling all prayer warriors", and finally giving way to "X was the best, most generous person I ever knew". People who were obviously kind and good-hearted in their personal lives, but who had bought into, and propagated, the right wing disinformation loop. A generation from now, when history majors in US universities take their required course on the COVID-19 pandemic, I expect that the HCAs will be required reading.
        ifyoubuildit 3y ago
        What was this public service? The best interpretation of this that I can come up with is that somehow, HCA would shame some number of at risk people into getting the vaccine and saving their lives. I wonder, are you familiar with any estimates on number needed to treat to prevent a death? In other words, how many people would need to be shamed into taking tbe vaccine to save one life? Realistically, it was a schadenfreude circle jerk. I obviously can't know this for sure, but I'm willing to wager that the number of people saved this way was negligible. It was just yet another place for the in crowd to shit on the out group and cheer each other on while they did it.
        jewayne 3y ago
        I already told you. When historians ask "Why did the US do so much more poorly in the pandemic than other first-world countries?" they will have a ready-made compilation of testimonials. This is tremendously important for future generations to know. Did the HCAs convince large numbers of people to get vaccinated? Almost certainly not, because these people were way beyond convincing. Yes every single person working in the ICU saw an instance where an unvaccinated patient wanted to get the vaccine after they were already on their death bed with COVID. But beyond that, I think almost no Team Hoax people changed their minds about the vaccine.
mustacheemperor 3y ago
Could it be possible that in the last 30 years you’ve had seasonal influenza and not recognized it, maybe a mild case? In my experience catching it a few times, there’s sick with the flu and siiiiiick with the flu. But immunocompromised people and others most at risk can catch it regardless of how bad you feel - mass vaccination is for those people too, not just you.
- rubicon33 3y ago
  Everyone has days when they feel kinda crummy, off their game, etc. I've always wondered if it's a super low-grade infection like influenza. No way to know without testing all the time.
- valianteffort 3y ago
  Sure but knowing that the efficacy of the flu shot has been less than 50% for most years of my life (in my region) it seemed like a coin toss not to get it but a 100% chance of feeling lousy if I did.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
ksenzee 3y ago
> I just don't see why I should get myself sick to risk not getting sick(er) If everyone acted this way, we'd never reach herd immunity with any vaccine-preventable disease, so yes, this is an anti-vaccine position. You're missing the fact that vaccines protect not just you, but the people around you.
- fknorangesite 3y ago
  > so yes, this is an anti-vaccine position. Or, at the very least, it is a deeply selfish one.
  - logicchains 3y ago
    It's a deeply selfish attitude for the elderly and obese (those most at risk from covid and influenza) to expect healthy people to take something that might have a net negative effect to them as individuals.
    - ksenzee 3y ago
      Children under five are at high risk from influenza. Even if you see nothing wrong with the antisocial and frankly eugenicist idea of letting the elderly and obese die off for want of herd immunity, you might consider the utility of keeping children alive so they can feed and change you in the nursing home.
      - peteradio 3y ago
        Do you have an literature which suggests herd immunity is even possible for flu?
        ksenzee 3y ago
        You can't reach herd immunity without a highly effective vaccine. No highly effective vaccine exists. If they manage to develop one, and if enough people get vaccinated, then herd immunity is possible. It's just math. The question is really whether a highly effective universal flu vaccine is possible to develop, and nobody knows that.
mrcrumb1 3y ago
Vaccines on a population level are less risky than the illnesses they prevent and generally reduce death and healthcare costs to society. This is true of both the flu and COVID vaccines. There's a nonzero chance that you'll feel worse with the vaccine than with the illness, there's also a nonzero chance that:a) someone else getting a vaccine has helped you not get sick and b) having gotten the vaccine could prevent serious harm in the case of illness. You can bet against those outcomes but your odds get worse and worse as you get older.
- valianteffort 3y ago
  My gripe was them claiming the vaccine would prevent you from getting or spreading covid despite knowing that was not true. It has now devolved to the vaccine will make covid suck less if you get it, there's a non-zero risk of complication from the vaccine, and lets just not talk about transmissibility.
rajin444 3y ago
The descent from "The vaccine is 99% effective and prevents transmission" to where we're at now was pretty eye opening. It sounded too good to be true and was. Nobody has been held accountable for coercing (and worse) the US population based on bad data. I don't see any reason to trust the government going forward.
- ChrisClark 3y ago
  No one who understood the vaccine said that. But deniers still claim they did.
  - valianteffort 3y ago
    I recall government sources and pharma claiming >90% efficacy for the mRNA shots, which alone seemed absurd for a virus we knew was mutating at a rapid rate. They also claimed you could not contract or transmit the virus if you were "vaccinated". Then redefined vaccination to fit their narrative. It took dystopian levels of misinformation for me to just lose all faith in the "experts". However honest their intentions may have been, to make claims you know aren't true is malicious at best.
  - brigandish 3y ago
    From [1]: > We're not sure, at this point, that the vaccine protects you against getting infected. We know for sure it's very, very good, 94 percent, 95 percent in protecting you against clinically recognizable disease, and almost a 100 percent in protecting you for severe disease. I'm looking at this paper[2] released in the Lancet in Feb 2022 and very, very few of the efficacy figures against severe disease show 100% effectiveness, nor anything like it in the vast majority of instances. I could be reading that big table wrong though, but the findings section has this: > For severe COVID-19 disease, vaccine efficacy or effectiveness decreased by 10·0 percentage points (95% CI 6·1–15·4) in people of all ages and 9·5 percentage points (5·7–14·6) in older people. Most (81%) vaccine efficacy or effectiveness estimates against severe disease remained greater than 70% over time. so I don't think I have, but happy to be corrected. The figures are certainly higher against alpha, but not 100%, that's quite an overstatement, in my view. [1] https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/CPT/date/2020-12-10/segment/01 https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/CPT/date/2020-12-10/segment... Chris Cuomo interviews Dr Fauci [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)00152-0/fulltext#pageBody https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Duration of effectiveness of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 disease: results of a systematic review and meta-regression
tanseydavid 3y ago
>> Anytime I mention this people call me antivax. You should politely and directly point out to them that the "flu shot" is not a vaccine and referring to it as a vaccine is ignorant.
- valianteffort 3y ago
  I was talking about both covid and the flu.

jewayne 3y ago

As somebody who was in the Phase 3 clinical trial for the Pfizer vaccine in 2020, I was never skeptical about the intelligence of my fellow Americans until I saw the way we handled covid. It's an article of faith in Team Hoax that "COVID vaccines will eventually turn out to be bad", even though unvaccinated people dropped like flies throughout all of 2021 (forever the year of the Herman Cain Awards). 400,000 deaths that were preventable by the vaccines. smh.

ifyoubuildit 3y ago
As one of those unvaccinated people that got covid in 2021, I wonder if you're aware of what your actual odds of dying from covid were at the time. Bonus points if you break it down by age. I'm not sure what probability dropping like flies equates to, but I think it's probably something pretty far off from reality. Also, whatever your position on any of this, the whole Herman Cain Awards thing is not something to be proud of participating in. Even if you buy the line that not taking the shots was some sort of major crime against your fellow humans (pretty hard to argue at this point, but for the sake of argument) HCA was disgusting.
- jewayne 3y ago
  I maintain that the unnecessary death of 400,000 people due to misinformation was more disgusting, but hey, to each his own.
  - ifyoubuildit 3y ago
    The unnecessary death of 400k people for any reason is indeed disgusting (even if those 400k were heavily weighted towards people who were at or beyond life expectancy, it's still tragic). That doesn't make it any more admirable for smug redditors to celebrate tragedy. Do you really find that to be a compelling argument?
    - jewayne 3y ago
      Whether you call it celebrating or properly recognizing, I feel they were doing a public service. Go back and read it, and you will see a distinct pattern, repeated literally hundreds of times. The same arc of (often vile) right-wing memes, conspiracy theories, and bravado, giving way to "tested positive, COVID is no joke", then to "calling all prayer warriors", and finally giving way to "X was the best, most generous person I ever knew". People who were obviously kind and good-hearted in their personal lives, but who had bought into, and propagated, the right wing disinformation loop. A generation from now, when history majors in US universities take their required course on the COVID-19 pandemic, I expect that the HCAs will be required reading.
      - ifyoubuildit 3y ago
        What was this public service? The best interpretation of this that I can come up with is that somehow, HCA would shame some number of at risk people into getting the vaccine and saving their lives. I wonder, are you familiar with any estimates on number needed to treat to prevent a death? In other words, how many people would need to be shamed into taking tbe vaccine to save one life? Realistically, it was a schadenfreude circle jerk. I obviously can't know this for sure, but I'm willing to wager that the number of people saved this way was negligible. It was just yet another place for the in crowd to shit on the out group and cheer each other on while they did it.
        jewayne 3y ago
        I already told you. When historians ask "Why did the US do so much more poorly in the pandemic than other first-world countries?" they will have a ready-made compilation of testimonials. This is tremendously important for future generations to know. Did the HCAs convince large numbers of people to get vaccinated? Almost certainly not, because these people were way beyond convincing. Yes every single person working in the ICU saw an instance where an unvaccinated patient wanted to get the vaccine after they were already on their death bed with COVID. But beyond that, I think almost no Team Hoax people changed their minds about the vaccine.

mustacheemperor 3y ago

Could it be possible that in the last 30 years you’ve had seasonal influenza and not recognized it, maybe a mild case? In my experience catching it a few times, there’s sick with the flu and siiiiiick with the flu. But immunocompromised people and others most at risk can catch it regardless of how bad you feel - mass vaccination is for those people too, not just you.

rubicon33 3y ago
Everyone has days when they feel kinda crummy, off their game, etc. I've always wondered if it's a super low-grade infection like influenza. No way to know without testing all the time.
valianteffort 3y ago
Sure but knowing that the efficacy of the flu shot has been less than 50% for most years of my life (in my region) it seemed like a coin toss not to get it but a 100% chance of feeling lousy if I did.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

ksenzee 3y ago

> I just don't see why I should get myself sick to risk not getting sick(er) If everyone acted this way, we'd never reach herd immunity with any vaccine-preventable disease, so yes, this is an anti-vaccine position. You're missing the fact that vaccines protect not just you, but the people around you.

fknorangesite 3y ago
> so yes, this is an anti-vaccine position. Or, at the very least, it is a deeply selfish one.
- logicchains 3y ago
  It's a deeply selfish attitude for the elderly and obese (those most at risk from covid and influenza) to expect healthy people to take something that might have a net negative effect to them as individuals.
  - ksenzee 3y ago
    Children under five are at high risk from influenza. Even if you see nothing wrong with the antisocial and frankly eugenicist idea of letting the elderly and obese die off for want of herd immunity, you might consider the utility of keeping children alive so they can feed and change you in the nursing home.
    - peteradio 3y ago
      Do you have an literature which suggests herd immunity is even possible for flu?
      - ksenzee 3y ago
        You can't reach herd immunity without a highly effective vaccine. No highly effective vaccine exists. If they manage to develop one, and if enough people get vaccinated, then herd immunity is possible. It's just math. The question is really whether a highly effective universal flu vaccine is possible to develop, and nobody knows that.

mrcrumb1 3y ago

Vaccines on a population level are less risky than the illnesses they prevent and generally reduce death and healthcare costs to society. This is true of both the flu and COVID vaccines. There's a nonzero chance that you'll feel worse with the vaccine than with the illness, there's also a nonzero chance that:a) someone else getting a vaccine has helped you not get sick and b) having gotten the vaccine could prevent serious harm in the case of illness. You can bet against those outcomes but your odds get worse and worse as you get older.

valianteffort 3y ago
My gripe was them claiming the vaccine would prevent you from getting or spreading covid despite knowing that was not true. It has now devolved to the vaccine will make covid suck less if you get it, there's a non-zero risk of complication from the vaccine, and lets just not talk about transmissibility.

rajin444 3y ago

The descent from "The vaccine is 99% effective and prevents transmission" to where we're at now was pretty eye opening. It sounded too good to be true and was. Nobody has been held accountable for coercing (and worse) the US population based on bad data. I don't see any reason to trust the government going forward.

ChrisClark 3y ago
No one who understood the vaccine said that. But deniers still claim they did.
- valianteffort 3y ago
  I recall government sources and pharma claiming >90% efficacy for the mRNA shots, which alone seemed absurd for a virus we knew was mutating at a rapid rate. They also claimed you could not contract or transmit the virus if you were "vaccinated". Then redefined vaccination to fit their narrative. It took dystopian levels of misinformation for me to just lose all faith in the "experts". However honest their intentions may have been, to make claims you know aren't true is malicious at best.
- brigandish 3y ago
  From [1]: > We're not sure, at this point, that the vaccine protects you against getting infected. We know for sure it's very, very good, 94 percent, 95 percent in protecting you against clinically recognizable disease, and almost a 100 percent in protecting you for severe disease. I'm looking at this paper[2] released in the Lancet in Feb 2022 and very, very few of the efficacy figures against severe disease show 100% effectiveness, nor anything like it in the vast majority of instances. I could be reading that big table wrong though, but the findings section has this: > For severe COVID-19 disease, vaccine efficacy or effectiveness decreased by 10·0 percentage points (95% CI 6·1–15·4) in people of all ages and 9·5 percentage points (5·7–14·6) in older people. Most (81%) vaccine efficacy or effectiveness estimates against severe disease remained greater than 70% over time. so I don't think I have, but happy to be corrected. The figures are certainly higher against alpha, but not 100%, that's quite an overstatement, in my view. [1] https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/CPT/date/2020-12-10/segment/01 https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/CPT/date/2020-12-10/segment... Chris Cuomo interviews Dr Fauci [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)00152-0/fulltext#pageBody https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Duration of effectiveness of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 disease: results of a systematic review and meta-regression

tanseydavid 3y ago

>> Anytime I mention this people call me antivax. You should politely and directly point out to them that the "flu shot" is not a vaccine and referring to it as a vaccine is ignorant.

valianteffort 3y ago
I was talking about both covid and the flu.