This question goes out those who took the 2 jabs? Will you you take it to get back to normality? Or are you sick of the government moving the goalposts constantly?
Exactly, you didn't say that. It is an intentional ommission to propagate FUD.
'My personal philosophy has been that when I find myself in total agreement with the consensus to the point of finding myself defending it, that is precisely the time where I have to stop and ask myself questions of the same consensus.'
I'm continually impressed by your thoughtfulness @Wibbs You integrate a lot of knowledge in the first place, listen carefully to all perspectives and then double-back and question your own assumptions unasked and come up with new interesting opinions.
Or complete and utter bullshít G. Then again bullshít is a good fertiliser, so something useful may yet grow from it. 😁
There is one way more effective tool... It is called natural immunity which give you much better protection. Many of that low caste of deplorables who we call "unvaccinated" already had their vaccine and boosters in form of actual covid.
Time to move on tackling more pressing issues.
The evidence to date suggests that vaccine-induced immunity provides better protection than infection-induced immunity.
Infection followed by vaccination provides better protection still.
Plus, of course, the morbidity associated with acquiring immunity by becoming infected is many, many times higher than the morbidity associated with acquiring immunity by vaccination.
Tl;dr: vaccines provide better protection and do much, much less damage than contracting Covid does.
Respectfully, you do have outdated info. None of the current vaccines beats natural immunity.
One unfortunately which works both ways. I'd agree that radicalisation and very hard line stances have been an unpleasant feature of this pandemic.
Your source for this?
[Genuine question - I am interested to follow this up.]
Just to re-cap, the question is "how do we reduce the number of people exposed to the coronavirus who go on to develop covid-19?"
Your solution: step 1: catch covid.
It's the equivalent of saying that kevlar helmets aren't 100% effective so I'll blow a hole in my head, so that enemy fire just flies straight through.
Its not equivalent at all, because covid doesn't blow a hole in your head. Its amazing after nearly 2 years of this people still think covid is the dangerous virus it was once thought to be.
Covid may not blow a hole in your head, but it is much, much more dangerous to you than the vaccine. In comparing vaccine-induced immunity and Covid-induced immunity, you have to factor in not just the relative strength of the immunity conferred, but also the relative morbidity of the alternative ways of acquiring the immunity.
It's evident from your calm and reasonable posting style that you haven't spent much time in this thread. 😂
@Shao Kahn wrote
You have the rabid vaccine fanatics of course. These people, it seems, are prepared to live with restrictions on our lives indefinitely
It is a incorrect to conflate vaccine positivity with being pro-restrictions.
I am a "fan" of vaccines because they enable us to have a lower level of disease for any given level of restrictions, or a lower level of restrictions for any given level of disease.
It's hardly my fault that that government's policy choices fall short of delivering the maximum benefits from that.
If we had a lower level of vaccinations we would have a higher level of restrictions.
The idea that vaccines have somehow been a mistake and we should just have ploughed on with normal life regardless is a complete fantasy.
Influenza from five years ago isn't going to protect me from this years strain.
I will get a booster but am going to wait until after Xmas. After my second jab I was out of action for almost two weeks. So tired I could hardly move. Had to take leave from work also for a week
Maybe it's 57.
Likewise....I was very sick too. But I am probably not going to get a booster. I am a fit, healthy, slim 61 year old (swim daily, hike weekly, cycle and walk). I got very sick after both AZ doses. I was off work for a week both times. Most of my siblings have got Covid and none of them reported anything more than tiredness and cold symptoms. All are fine now and 2 are older than me. I would prefer to get natural immunity from Covid at this stage. I deplore the way the public have been treated in all of this and that is a huge factor in my decision. The way we have been spoken down to, criticised, marginalised if people decided to wait and get more info before vaccination. I also do NOT agree with vaccination of kids.
The only thing that will change my mind is if I need a booster to travel out of this country. In that case I have no choice. Otherwise no booster for me.
JFYI, you are far likelier (on average) to have a more severe reaction to the virus than the vaccine (especially if the vaccine caused you to take time off), the immune system (that causes the symptoms) is stimulated in the same way but with the virus you have something real to fight against.
People have been "spoken down to" because they have been acting in a way that imposes substatial costs on on society on the basis of their own half baked facebook analysis which has little or no basis in actual science.
Your decision to vaccinate or not is not entirely a private matter in the same way as the speed you drive at or the amount of smokey coal you burn is not.
This pandemic has revleaed a shocking amount of mé féiners in society.
Reads like they're already vaccinated, doesn't the booster just speed up the recovery they are likely to make???
Depends on age and any underlying conditions (which are also common with older age), 60+ is the danger zone, if you had a severe reaction to the vaccine (barring an allergy) you'll probably have an even worse reaction to the virus (where probably is down to the viral load and immune system health at time of infection). It probably won't kill you though.
There's no relation to how someone reacts to the vaccine and how severely they will be affected by Covid (either way), 60 isn't particularly old either tbh, most age related serious cases seem to be well into their eighties.
Either way I'm sure the poster is more than aware of their options and risks associated and can choose for themselves.
Just on a tiny purely anecdotal view of people I know who've had strong reactions to the vaccine, who also caught covid, they also had much more obvious symptoms with the pox itself, even after vaccination, so without it wouldn't be a good plan. It seems to go the other way too. I had zero effects from vaccination and when I actually caught the pox itself months before I was vaccinated I only noticed because my smell and taste vanished. Nothing else at all(taste and smell still hasn't come back, maybe 30% of before). Yet I've also read that people were more likely to get a reaction from the vaccine if they'd caught the pox before. No doubt when the data is in we'll get a more clear picture.
Whatever happened to 'your body, your choice'? For a country that's been pushed in a pro-choice direction for the past decade regardless of that cost to society, to turn so nastily on anyone who expresses a contrary opinion (not necessarily anti-vax) is shocking.
BTW I'm pro-choice and have had the vaccine before anyone jumps.
in a global pandemic... perhaps it’s best we concern ourselves less about individual freedoms which we still have btw and more about what we can and need to do do together as a collective...
You talk about "the public" as if they are one homogenous group. I am part of the public and don't feel spoken down to. I don't agree with every govt action but I do believe they were doing the best is a changing situation trying to balance a lot of competing issue.
I will take the booster when offered because the benefits of vaccination in terms of reducing harmful disease has been well established here and abroad. I have yet to hear a compelling argument against boosters. Government decisions will not influence my decision, It will be purely based on what I see as the best medical outcome for myself.
You want it badly enough to generate a strong immune response but not have any medium to severe symptoms of that immune response (which is why I say on average), the immune system is the one generating the symptoms by it's reaction to either the virus or part of the virus via the vaccine.
People (on here at least) tend to ignore any severe illness other than death when rating vaccine effectiveness.
This is just completely wrong. Your body doesn't use one immune system to neutralise vaccines and another to neutralise virus. What your immune system learns from fighting vaccine it uses to fight virus if it encounters it later. There is no magic behind this.
As you say, a global pandemic.
Perhaps it's best we concern ourselves with getting doses to low vaccination countries rather than using them all ourselves so we can go on a holiday to Portugal.
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