Any others cynical about a vaccine?

[mealiejimmy]

I don’t think anyone has said this Covid vaccine is going to be effective.
An effective vaccine would have to eradicate its opponent.
Ken.

A vaccine does not have to be 100% effective
It only has to be effective enough to bring the R number to less than 1 in the general population.
At present there is no agreement on what % of the population would need to have had the virus and/or be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, and estimates have ranged from 20% - 60%
Compare that with measles, where about 92-95% of the population need to have been vaccinated or have had it for herd immunity to kick in.
The difference is that the R number for measles is about 16-18.

Cheers

Bruce

 

[mealiejimmy]

Can’t help but feel very suspicious of any supposed vaccine for covid.
we don’t have effective vaccines for other corona viruses, at best they limit affects, to bring out vaccinations so swiftly means they can’t have been tested to the N’th degree, side affects can’t be known, but the real cynic in me thinks this is the only way they can reverse the clusterfuk of a situation we are in right now, give everyone a placebo, tell the world it’s fine to resume normality, people continue to die, but instead of everyone being fearful of the dreaded covid, they die of flu, cancer, whatever it may be, but no one is ever declared victim of covid ever again..... the world is saved, and whoever comes up with said vaccine is rich beyond their wildest dreams.
anyone got any tin foil, I’m running low on hats.

As far as daft ideas go, this is in the same league as Donald Trump believing he won the election

Cheers

Bruce

 

[Apthorpe]

But I'd also question why people think everyone should have it?
Surely if it's effective and you've had it then what would it matter if I hadn't? You are protected against covid so I couldn't give it to you?

This added to the fact that I don't personally know anyone who knows anyone that's been ill or died, the fact that nobody seems to have died of anything other than covid in the past few months, the crazy rules that are supposed to stop it spreading but are different everywhere, the way the figures are all reported, the ONS stats showing that the average age of those that have died ''with'' Covid (note that nobody says ''from''Covid) is 84.2 while the life expectancy in the uk is 81 and dozens of other things all make me question the whole thing and not just the vaccine (to a virus that's already reportedly mutated into 20+ forms and will continue to do so)

Each to their own but I know where I'll be when the queue starts.

Edd

Why people think everyone should have a vaccine: Vaccines can be effective in two ways. They can protect the individual or, if a sufficiently high percentage of the population take it, they can protect the entire population - not just from the effects of being exposed to the disease but also because it can prevent the disease from being resident in the population. In some cases, complete elimination of the disease is possible.

I get that you don't know anyone who has suffered from covid, but you cannot seriously be doubting that a very large number of people have died of covid. In fact, it is relatively unusual that you don't know anybody who knows anybody who has died of it. The rules are incoherent, and the way the government has been misusing and misreporting data is a disgrace.

May I explain the apparent life expectancy paradox?
At birth, your life expectancy may 81, but as you go through life you life expectancy will increase above that figure. This is because 81 is an average figure influenced heavily by the people who die in infancy, and teenage/young adult phases. If you haven't died as an infant, not had a fatal overdose, car crash or violent death by the time you're 30, then your personal odds of surviving beyond 81 are better than average. If from a group of 1000 people, four die as infants, which they do, then they are skewing the average figure down quite a long way because they're collectively 320 years worth of early death. The same happens with young mens' higher death rates.

 

[Apthorpe]

So why no effective (and I mean effective) vaccine for the common cold or flu? I mean if ever there was a way to make money????

Because they mutate on an annual basis, so you need different vaccines each year against viruses that may not even exist yet. The flu vaccine is effective against the strains it inoculates for. What you mean by effective merely reflects a failure of understanding.

 

[Namman]

Perhaps most of you are not old enough to remember the the wonder drug Thaliminide that was introduced to the world as the answer to the worlds Polio problem, well I am and know how that turned out.
My mother was a 'one of' and of the opinion that 'God' would sort us all out and as a result, while others at school or growing up between the late 40's up to the late 50's had inoculations, I or any of my brothers and sisters were not allowed any of them.
I remember empty desks at school after the holidays, we were too young to know why they were not with us any more but I do remember the prayers we said at Assembly for them.
I didn't think a lot about it then but as I grew older (and supposedly wiser) I began to think and relate their absence with the jabs they had.
The media wasn't as wide spread as it is today and the fact children weren't allowed to read the newspapers, that were available, because of the horrible things that were reported on, perhaps a suitable period before the widespread use of the new drug may be sensible.

I thought thalidomide was used for anxiety and morning sickness in pregnant women. However it was, and is, a tragedy.

 

[Namman]

Or you could just make up sh!t and believe that.

The facts are as follows:
This vaccine is one of 9 (out of several hundred companies and scientific bodies' attempts) that reach stage 3 trials a few months ago. ALL medicines pass through the same sort of approval process. If you're happy to take any type of medicine at all, it will have either been through the same or a weaker approval process. If, on the other hand, you firmly reject every aspect of modern medicine and see your witch-doctor for ailments..........
The process they all go through is lengthy, extensive, very expensive and designed by the world's leading experts (not internet morons) to be safe and effective. Firstly, they are tested (Stage 0) in vitro or on animals to make sure they're safe and have positive effects. Then they go through three stages of tests on humans, each stage of which requires prior approval from a regulatory body. They are concisely described here:

United Kingdom | GSK

GSK United Kingdom

uk.gsk.com

Trial stages

If a drug passes all those hurdles, the full safety data and the results of the trials are then re-examined by expert medical boards by each country's medical regulators. Companies and regulators are very aware that any part of this process may end up being examined in a court of law in any jurisdiction where the drug is supplied.

This process means that vaccines are as safe as medical authorities claim beyond any rational level of doubt. Vaccines are highly effective at suppressing or eliminating disease when a high enough percentage of the population takes the vaccines, such that there is no "reservoir" of unvaccinated people for the vaccine to reside in.
And that is why anybody spreading misinformation or doubt on this topic is not only a cretin, but actually harming others and risking lives.

Well Said.

 

[JabaliHunter]

Ok, I can see how to ignore posts from individual members. How do I ignore Covid as a topic?

 

[Dalua]

Following on from Apthorpe's post, and based on the assumption that EMcC's vaccine concerns date also from the 1950s
A brief follow-up on the polio-vaccine part: the Salk vaccine, which was made of inactivated (meaning killed, if 'alive' is a reasonable description for viruses) specimens of the actual virus that causes the disease, was implicated in causing the diease itself when inadequate process and QC enabled the stuff to be sent out for use still containing live vaccine. Hence, folk expecting to be made immune to polio were inadvertently infected with it.
I think in fact I remember being taught this for biology A-Level: the virus was killed using formaldehye - which also caused the viruses to form clumps, the effect of which was to shield the viruses in the middle of the clump from the inactivating effects of the formaldehyde.

Not at all the same process used to make the Covid vaccine.

 

[Shabz]

I won’t be having a vaccine. Every year, my wife gets the flu jab and then has ‘Winter Vomiting Bug’ two days later. I’ve never had either.

I’m naturally quite a socially distanced person anyway. I work from home or on my own in the countryside, I barely ever go to any shops or meet anybody. The whole lockdown thing didn’t really make much difference to me. From a risk assessment perspective, it barely seems worth getting a vaccine. No matter how safe the authorities say it is.

It was the authorities, after all, who filled our houses and schools with asbestos, sprayed children with DDT to show how safe it was, injected pregnant women with thalidomide, encouraged us to buy diesel cars and covered tower blocks with flammable materials.

 

[Hell Toupee]

Before anyone says they aren't having the vaccine, they should read, understand and digest this.

https://bit.ly/36fc5JG

 

[Fair Hill]

Before anyone says they aren't having the vaccine, they should read, understand and digest this.

https://bit.ly/36fc5JG

zambezi will be scouring the internet now until he can find something that in his own mind that will counter this.

He'll throw up a link to it then after giving us an interpretation akin to the lad who did the sign language at Nelson Mandela's funeral.

 

[Davee]

Too late it has already mutated once -that we know about- Google covid 19 + minks.

 

[gixer1]

But if you have the vaccine why would you worry about being exposed to people who haven't had it? Makes no sense. Unless of course it doesn't work

It works for some, not for others, that’s the case with many vaccines. So although my kids may be vaccinated, if an non vaccinated kid went to school a-symptomatic that could have had the vaccine and not contracted the virus it may lead to others getting sick.
Regards,
Gixer

 

[EMcC]

I must apologise to the more Medically educated members of this site for the mistake I made when referring to thalidomide as a cure for Polio.
I was under the impression it was, only because I read in the newspapers reference to it when reporting babies born without arms or legs or other deformities.
So as it stands, I do not know which drug it was that ladies were given on the understanding that it was beneficial in some way and it turned out it wasn't.
So going back to the original topic, my opinion is that it will take a few years to absolutely certain there are no side effects after taking this new vaccine.
Interestingly tho, having read some of the corrections to my reference to thalidomide, it was mentioned that it is still being used in the treatment of cancer.
Having just finished a period of Chemo, I was told the dose contained a poison of sorts and how it works on the elements of my blood, I am glad it is still being used.

 

[Apthorpe]

Before anyone says they aren't having the vaccine, they should read, understand and digest this.

https://bit.ly/36fc5JG

Anyone not inclined to have the vaccine is extremely unlikely to be mentally capable of doing as you suggest. Which is exactly why vaccine-scepticism is so dangerous.

 

[Apthorpe]

But if you have the vaccine why would you worry about being exposed to people who haven't had it? Makes no sense. Unless of course it doesn't work

It makes lots of sense. Ideally, if everyone gets vaccinated against a disease then the disease can no longer exist in the population, meaning that the risk of it mutating into new strains, against which a vaccine wouldn't work, is also eliminated.

 

[Buchan]

I must apologise to the more Medically educated members of this site for the mistake I made when referring to thalidomide as a cure for Polio.
I was under the impression it was, only because I read in the newspapers reference to it when reporting babies born without arms or legs or other deformities.
So as it stands, I do not know which drug it was that ladies were given on the understanding that it was beneficial in some way and it turned out it wasn't.
So going back to the original topic, my opinion is that it will take a few years to absolutely certain there are no side effects after taking this new vaccine.
Interestingly tho, having read some of the corrections to my reference to thalidomide, it was mentioned that it is still being used in the treatment of cancer.
Having just finished a period of Chemo, I was told the dose contained a poison of sorts and how it works on the elements of my blood, I am glad it is still being used.

Good post - this is science. You start with an idea, you get better evidence, you revise the idea.

You are right - it will take a while for all side-effects to be seen, but the results so far are very encouraging

 

[Rasputin]

Before anyone says they aren't having the vaccine, they should read, understand and digest this.

https://bit.ly/36fc5JG

Zero chance I will be having it. Had covid and it's nothing compared to when I had flu and was hospitalised with pneumonia.

 

[Dunwaters]

I hadn't heard about the Coronavirus passport for those who take the vaccine. Is this fact of just some of the media guessing game, I am asking because I don't know so is there a link available to back this up please? If so I would be interested in reading about it.

No truth at all, as far as I know, I made it up because I was bored and I’m a very bad person.

 

[zambezi]

Before anyone says they aren't having the vaccine, they should read, understand and digest this.

https://bit.ly/36fc5JG

Thanks HT. That looks a complicated read for the lay person.

Could you unpack a few items please? All genuine questions, as you know.

What measurement determines whether the mRNA vaccine has been effective or not?

If someone has been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and their body has dealt with it, would they test any different to those who had taken the vaccine and it had been declared a success for them?