Me, personally, no. Everyone has the right to be concerned and ask questions.
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Hesitance and concern is normal, I am still hesitant and concerned but I went for it since I do know it helps me survive this thing if I get it. It will also help both my parents survive it.
Anti-vaxxers refuse to listen to both sides of the story like my mum/aunt. They spread misinformation and fear-mongering more than anyone else
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Well said.
I also believe it is one thing to refuse your right to take a vaccination, provided there is sufficient evidence to back up your claim. Especially so when there is the greater good that said vaccine is claming to do, which is generally backed up by scientific data.
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All right, so Iâm someone who is not going to get vaccinated as I donât believe there was enough trial and error done for the vaccines being administered. I also believe that your body is created to naturally create antibodies to fight any virus or bacteria you are exposed to, not referring to HIV or Cancer.
The Vax that are given to kids had extensive testing before it was allowed but this vaccine came out from nowhere.
Now donât get me wrong I donât try and talk anyone out of taking the vaccine because that is your choice and my choice is not to take it.
So whether Iâm an anti-vaxxer or not Im not bothered by what people think, because ultimately itâs my choice just like taking the vac was yours
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And there ainât nothing wrong with that. Something like that I can fully respect and understand your perspective now.
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I wouldnât count on this. Unless youâve had it and survived it, it is essentially a genetic lottery of whether youâll survive it or not. I donât really know enough about medical things to give specific examples, but Iâve heard this statement debunked multiple times. If it were true, then we wouldnât need childhood vaccines.
With that said, Iâm cautious about the long term effects of these new vaccines which is impossible to know about at this stage. Since my family is pretty much mostly self isolated anyway at the moment and weâve at least had it, we can afford to wait-and-see and donât need to make any decision in haste / fear.
However, there is a new vaccine being developed that is currently in (or post) trials and is apparently more efficient against the virus in almost all of its variants. So if possible, Iâm going to try and wait for Novavaxâs vaccine.
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/unfriends half the people at MEW.
Seriously though. I have no problems with people waiting or having concerns. What I donât like is when people keep throwing anti-vax stuff in my face. Or posting anti-vax stuff all the time. Or telling people they shouldnât take the vaccine. Had to unfriend quite a few people on Facebook.
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Like so many other things in society today, this has been extremely polarizing. People seem to be at the extreme poles of this with the reasonable middle ground being eroded / silenced. I tend to just keep out of the conversations / debates about it.
I havenât unfriended anyone on Facebook yet, but Iâm not much on there anyway and if I do, I go straight to the private groups that I belong to so the extremist comments doesnât really concern (or get noticed by) me.
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The trials for the vaccines had between 40 000 and 60 000 participants in each - Pfizerâs, for example.. That is a staggering number. Clinical trials for drugs and vaccines are typically in the thousands of people. It had trials exactly as thorough as any other drug or vaccine that has been released to date - the only difference is that the companies were allowed to start the paperwork for manufacturing while awaiting the final trial results. I think a lot of the concern comes from this:
Do remember that the work on the vaccine wasnât started in March last year⌠In fact, it nearly stopped when the 2003 SARS pandemic died down. Research slowed right down, as it wasnât as urgent anymore, but still progressed. Our favourite rock star biologist contributed to the body of work. When the Covid pandemic hit, that body of work was leveraged into a working vaccine model.
No cure or treatment for smallpox exists. A vaccine can prevent smallpox, but the risk of the vaccineâs side effects is too high to justify routine vaccination for people at low risk of exposure to the smallpox virus.
Do you know why we arenât vaccinated against smallpox?
Because our parents were.
Yeah, but no. A couple of reasons:
- For the vaccine to be successful in eradicating the virus, herd immunity is required. We need as many people as possible to be vaccinated, because some simply canât - they might be immuno compromised, or have an allergic reaction, or other reasons that they are not eligible. The more people we get vaccinated, the quicker covid goes away.
- Even when youâre vaccinated, you can still get and spread covid. So those unvaccinated around vaccinated people are still at risk so long as the virus is being spread. To stop that from happening, we need to eradicate it with herd immunity enabled by mass vaccination.
- Vaccinated folks have a 95% reduction in hospitalization rate among healthcare workers in initial US studies. You ending up in hospital still puts an enormous strain on an already fragile healthcare system, which affects all of us.
So itâs your decision, yes, but donât fool yourself into believing that it does not affect the rest of society.
Wall of text, I know, but I tend to go off on the subject. Please know that all of this was written with lots of respect and love.
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I wouldnât count on this. You know whatâs interesting about when you get covid the second time? Itâs completely different to the first time. You simply donât know how your body will react. A friend asked my wife for her opinion on which vaccine to get, if they had a choice. With no hesitance she said âthe first one you canâ.
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True, it will be different every time, but having a good immune system that has been tested against covid provides some evidence that youâre more likely to handle another infection than not. This was also the opinion of a few doctors during a informal conversations (I bring up covid informally with all the doctors I speak with). This is however still not any guarantee.
However, that was just a side-note. The main point was about us self isolating and thus our chances of getting it in the first place is extremely slim. The only reason we got it a year ago is because we knowingly took someone with probable covid into our house (which then turned out to be definite). If it wasnât for that, we still wouldnât have gotten it. That is why I said we have the luxury of choice to wait-and-see or wait for the Novavax vac.
I recognise that almost nobody is in the same position as us, so to be clear though⌠when people ask me about the vaccine, I recommend they take itâŚ
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My father died in hospital due to covid, Iâve had 4 family members who died from Covid, all in hospital.
Myself, my wife, my in laws all had Covid twice and self medicated at home and hired oxygen.
Statistics show that most deaths happen in hospital and I have proof of that as all 4 family members yes were short of breath, but could still walk and talk.
When they were in hospital we were always told, âOh we are going to try this new option to try and hopefully we will get some positive outcomesâ
The people in hospital with Covid have basically become guinea pigs to try new things.
Two family members of friends of mine died after getting the vaccine.
But like I said, you welcome to take the vaccine that is your choice, I wonât take it because that is my choice.
I could also say I hate these vaxxies who are trying to force me to take the vac, but I wonât say that because they have a right to say what they want.
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It is exactly your example that sparked my question.
I hope this conversation doesnât get out of hand, which is partly why I asked it. For the most part MEW is very civil and noone name-calls, we ARE also a unique corner of the web, but the person I had in mind when asking the question has been labelled an anti-vaxxer on many occasion and on numerous platforms for your exact reason, simply because they donât feel comfortable being the guinea pig and their express concern is long term side effects which are at this point entirely unknown. So they have taken the stance not to personally get the vaccine. They accept the consequences.
While I have my own misgivings about it and there are points I agree on as well, I do plan on getting the vaccine. It just makes me sad that as mentioned, people tend to be polarizing and there is no more room in the world for nuance and personal opinion that differs possibly only slightly from one person to the next.
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I think the most polarisation aspect of this is that a lot of people feel that an anti-vaxxerâs accepting the consequences of their own choice has an impact on those who do not make that choice or even have a choice if they are infected by the anti-vaxxer.
Does a person who has been infected by someone who is an anti-vaxxer have a choice in their circumstance? Its a lot of grey area to be walking there.
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So do you feel this person (and by extension jaydogg86) are an âanti-vaxxerâ? When they are not against the concept of vaccines but merely apprehensive about the one we are living through its development stage.
You used that wording now, so I just want to clarify.
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As I said a grey area. The black and white is: you can either feel that getting the vaccine is a MUST for EVERYONE since it is the only way to protect others who have not been vaccinated OR you can feel that the vaccine is deadly/useless/the virus does not exist.
Everything in between is grey and because there is no exact evidence of who infected who, the grey area will always be there.
What I am saying is that this is the reason people are polarising more than usual, it directly concerns the health/life of people. It is nothing like a choice between political parties or something as mundane like that.
It is life and death and reality.
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Well⌠yes⌠thatâs where we keep the sick people⌠If most death were to happen in the Checkers, you should be concerned. People dying in hospital is par for the course. My wife lost 6 patients on Friday, one on Saturday, and one Sunday evening. If they were not at risk of dying, they would not be in the hospital in the first place.
Would you have preferred they use the COVID protocols developed in 2015?
Which is very different from dying of the vaccineâŚ
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Does the label really matter all that much? Jaydogg86 has been engaging about what his view are, and while in my opinion he does not fit the prototypical âAnti-vaxxerâ description, others might think he does⌠it wonât change how heâs expressing his opinion or how Iâm engaging with him.
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I think a lot of the frustration is also around points like this. The long term side effects are unknown, but only in the same way that it is unknown if the sun will blow up in the 24 hours. Odds are, no.
https://www.chop.edu/news/long-term-side-effects-covid-19-vaccine
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