Covid vaccines - thread banned users in First Post

You said

When asked for details, or examples, your response is simply LOL, and you ask me to prove you're not right !!! Surely even you can see that's disingenuous? If that's the standard of discussion you want then anyone can make any statement, however ridiculous, and just challenge others to prove them wrong! If you want to be taken seriously you need to justify statements you make, and so far you don't seem to be able to.

When asked for examples you can't give any, and fall back on claiming Ireland is a world leader in cases and hospitalisations. Again, I challenge you to say how you conclude this? Is it just a feeling you have, or have you done any research to find out?

As Ireland is nowhere near the top of the leader board, either in terms of cases, or deaths, or excess deaths, it shows you haven't looked at any of the facts! If you want to educate yourself then Google will give you plenty of information. One such web site is https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates?fsrc=core-app-economist, and from there you will see that Ireland is way down the list, with an official Covid death toll of 110 / 100k population, vs many countries with official Covid deaths above 200/100k (incl USA, UK, and even Peru, with 600/100k). When excess deaths are measured Ireland does even better, with a high estimate of 58/100k, vs UK(200/100k), USA(310/100k), Brazil(340/100k), Mexico(470/100k), Russia(600/100k), Poland(360/100k), Serbia(610/100k), etc.

So it looks like you have been proven to be completely wrong. I can only conclude that you either don't care about the facts, or you've been so indoctrinated by conspiracy sites that you simply believe, like a religion, and don't really understand it yourself! It would be ok to say you don't understand the numbers, what is not ok is making statements that are false, simply because you are repeating falsehoods you read elsewhere.

Ok, to be fair to you according to the "Our World in Data" site we are near the top as regards cases (for Nov we are 20th in number of cases out of 206 countries tracked). However to put some context on this ...

• So far in Nov we rank 20 out of 206 countries, with approx 8,000 cases / million in prev two weeks (the top 4 countries each had over 17,000 cases / million)
• In October we ranked 32/206 countries for cases. In Sept we ranked 33/206. In June we were 69/206. So the trend is clear, that our cases are going up. I'm not an expert on this but clearly as we opened up since early summer we can't be surprised that cases have increased. The same pattern is seen in the UK, but neither here, nor in the UK, do we see exponential growth, and it's likely that unvaccinated individuals account for a chunk of the increase that is happening (and likely that the vaccines are preventing the exponential growth that necessitated our previous lockdowns).
• For the past 6 months we ranked between 22-26 of 139 countries for tests performed per thousand of the population. As we are in the top 18% of countries for testing it's likely we find more cases than countries that test less! So our case ranking above is possibly (much!) better in reality.
• Out of 33 countries that provided data on hospitalisations/million we were consistently near the bottom with much less people in hospital due to covid that most other countries. Since Aug we've edged up, and in Sept we were 17th highest of 33 countries, with 63/million in hosp, vs UK(113), US(260), France(139), Serbia(531), etc. In Oct we were 15th / 33 with 84 in hosp, vs UK(113), US(160), France(99), Serbia(961). So as regards hospitalisations we're Not 'among world leaders', even if we have moved up as we reopened.
• One of the most reliable indicators of covid performance, that doesn't depend on deaths 'with covid' vs 'of covid', or on the amount of testing, etc., is excess deaths. In that regard Ireland has performed extremely well. The previous Economist data I linked above showed this, and also the data from Our World in Data (see here) and they both tally with the picture shown by medrxiv last Jan (see here), all of whom show Ireland with comparatively little excess deaths.

Given the above I don't know how you can conclude we've done badly, or that our lockdowns caused us to do worse than countries that didn't lock down! Our lockdown earlier in the pandemic, and the restrictions we all endured, are the most obvious explanation for our minimal excess deaths, and low hospitalisations compared to other countries.

I said what I think about vaccines in my first post, I don't think this tread is about deaths from Covid.

How safe compared to catching Covid? You're asking a different question but anyway I'll reply why not.

Nobody knows how safe compared to catching Covid, it'll take years of studies to work that out won't it.

It's still ongoing, it's like asking what the final score is 15 minutes into a soccer match.

Everyone just has to decide for themselves, there's risks either way.

This forum is called 'Covid vaccines safety' so that's what I posted about.

Nobody knows if it's lower or higher risk yet.

But my opinion would be -

If you're old/vulnerable it'd be better to take the vaccine.

If you're not old/vulnerable it's a 50/50 call.

I've no problem with anyone taking it.

I've no problem with anyone not taking it.

I have zero interest in whether you take my opinion or not.

Relax a bit man, this is just a website where people give opinions.