COVID-19 Vaccine

[InbetweenDreams]

@calgor Well, I suppose it will end when the virus infects everyone and is no longer a pandemic in that way or people stop caring about it altogether. Most people aren't wearing masks now. I think during my entire vacation I saw maybe 2-3 people wearing masks. There seems to be a large number of people who think the vaccine is untested, despite much of the population having already gotten it....they're worried about what it might do to them in 20 years which is utter tripe, considering the number of people who run to McDonald's when the McRib is back, smoke cigarettes and drink Red Bull.

[calgor]

@calgor Well, I suppose it will end when the virus infects everyone and is no longer a pandemic in that way or people stop caring about it altogether. Most people aren't wearing masks now. I think during my entire vacation I saw maybe 2-3 people wearing masks. There seems to be a large number of people who think the vaccine is untested, despite much of the population having already gotten it....they're worried about what it might do to them in 20 years which is utter tripe, considering the number of people who run to McDonald's when the McRib is back, smoke cigarettes and drink Red Bull.

There's a guy on another site I visit who is convinced that everyone who is vaccinated will be dead in 2 years. I can't even fathom what kind of other crazy stuff must be circulating in certain corners of the internet.

[eastofeden]

The problem in my opinion is millions of Americans are suffering from a severe case of cognitive dissonance. 

This is not a new phenomenon but it is now a critical condition. 

In other words - too often the same people who complain the most about something are EXACTLY the cause of the conditions they complain about.

Education (and a conscience) are the cure - time will tell.

[Jay]

I received my second dose of AstraZeneca on last Friday. I felt slightly dizzy after the nurse injected me with the vaccine. But it only lasted for 10mins or so. I didn't experience anything else. I did take an aspirin after I reached home. As for my first dose, I had a bruise on my injected arm and light fever on the first three days. Nothing else.

In my family - 

My father received Pfizer (Fully vaccinated)

My mother received Sinovac (Waiting for her second dose)

My big sister received Sinovac (Fully vaccinated)

My big brother received AstraZeneca (Fully vaccinated)

My younger brother received Pfizer (Waiting for his second dose)

I was supposed to get Pfizer as I work with a humanitarian organisation but I received a jab offer of AstraZeneca by the government few weeks earlier. Each minute counts so I went with AstraZeneca.

[InbetweenDreams]

The problem in my opinion is millions of Americans are suffering from a severe case of cognitive dissonance. 

This is not a new phenomenon but it is now a critical condition. 

In other words - too often the same people who complain the most about something are EXACTLY the cause of the conditions they complain about.

Education (and a conscience) are the cure - time will tell.

I think you're correct with a few exceptions.

The county I live in has a ~39% vaccination rate for the first and second dose, meaning the people who wanted the vaccine have pretty much got it, that is considerably lower than the ~70% national vaccination rate. Oddly enough the percentage that is vaccinated is also about the same along party lines, I'll let you guess how the county votes. So why does it appear that the choice to get vaccinated falls along party lines concerning an issue that isn't (or shouldn't be) political?

While it might not be correct to generalize things but it seems that the right-wing media is partially to blame. But probably not the biggest problem.

I think those who have got the vaccine are putting it off for no reason other than they just won't go get it, maybe it's procrastination, maybe they're lazy, maybe they're working on the time or for whatever reason think they don't need it. Whatever the case is, you got those folks.

Then you got your classic anti-vaxxers...

Then you have your variety of people who believe in conspiracy theories surrounding the vaccine like it's full of microchips or that they want to come door to door to take your guns.

I have heard a several arguments about why people won't take the vaccine. Claims that it's their body, their choice and sure, it is --but I have also heard that saying somewhere else, I wonder where that could be? I have also heard that they won't take an experimental vaccine, that it hasn't been researched and the long-term effects of such a vaccine are unknown. The other thing that people don't take into account is that, it's not just about you.

This is where I call into question about whether people going by their lizard brain or not. First, the development of mRNA vaccines is nothing new and have been in use for decades. The idea that the effects of taking the vaccine would be of more risk than contracting COVID is unfounded and misguided (I'm trying to be polite here).

I also heard the argument that you can still get COVID even if you did get the vaccine. That is true, you can and it is much more likely that you'll have a mild case. In North Carolina, the NCDHHS press release presented data that shows the unvaccinated are 15 times more likely to die from COVID.

Recently, in one of the neighboring counties I live nearby posted about the surge of COVID-19 patients. This county has about 23k residents and the hospital also serves neighboring counties. They have 5 ICU beds, 45 inpatient beds. They currently have 8 people in ICU, so they're short there. Of the 64 inpatients, 46 are COVID cases. Of the 46 COVID patients, 3 were vaccinated, the rest aren't. So what can we say here? Well, I hope no one needs to go to the hospital anytime soon. Ambulances are already waiting outside ER's for hours because the hospitals have nowhere to put people. So again, it's not all about you and it isn't just about COVID anymore.

That being said, vaccine hesitancy isn't new. Hell, a screw up in the polio vaccine resulted in 200,00 children receiving a vaccine that had *live* polio viruses which resulted in some 200 children paralyzed and killing 10. There's of course the issue with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine where blood clotting in 6 people and 1 death occurred. So yes, there are risks involved, but they pale in comparison to the risk imposed of not being vaccinated.

To put it all in perspective, COVID isn;t polio, it isn't targeting children, it is targeting the elderly and those with medical conditions.

The 1952 Polio epidemic was the worst outbreak in
the nation's history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145 people died
and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis, with most of the victims being
children.

Since COVID started last year over 642,000 people in the US have died, many people who recover from COVID face damage to organs such as the heart, lungs and even the brain. This is not the flu.

Finally, if you're still in doubt, go visit your local hospital and see it for yourself. You can ignore all the information, science, data and so on. You can bury your head in the sand and pretend it isn't happening. However, I think someone has to be pretty sick at this point to allow more people to needlessly die when they can do something about it.

[eastofeden]

Oops - I tried to edit my post and it was deleted instead.

[InbetweenDreams]

That's happened a few times, did you get the CloudFlare error?

[eastofeden]

I have seen something with Cloudfare but not sure if it was here or somewhere else. 

I think what I did was highlight the whole post to copy and move it to the top because after I hit reply it was confusing and I wanted to just reply without quoting anything above my reply. I don;'t know if that makes sense or even if that is what happened but it was my guess.

[InbetweenDreams]

Yep it makes sense, I do the same thing lol

[InbetweenDreams]

I do find it both an interesting perspective and unfortunate for Eric Clapton who had an adverse reaction to the AstraZeneca vaccine...



I think there needs to be clarification, one is that adverse reactions do happen but are rare and that yes, some people have died from having taken the vaccine...

Reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination are rare. More than 369 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through August 30, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 7,218 reports of death (0.0020%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nco...vents.html

As for the message in the interview about brainwashing and controlling people, well, I think everyone can think for themselves. Is there validity to the claims? Maybe, possibly, but just as they say fear is used to control people, irrational fear is also at play as well. However, he does raise other points that I do think are worth listening to. This is, in my opinion where the vaccination effort fails. Shit like lotteries, giveaways and making those who don't want the vaccine (for whatever reason...valid or not) to be seen as murderers is not the way to go about it.

So the big question is, how do you do outreach? I do think that *most* people should get vaccinated. Frankly if you weren't convinced from the start I don't think a lottery convinced you either.

Then you have Joe Rogan who got Ivermectin from his doctor. Here's the thing, he got it from a doctor, not a feed store. That's what he fails to mention is that people were buying that shit from places like Tractor Supply Co and other farming and feed stores that were for livestock, not because the government can't allow there to be another treatment option for COVID which supposedly is a requirement for the vaccines to have emergency use authorization. That's the problem with all these alternative treatments, not only is there often conflicting evidence for some of the treatments but people start doing stupid shit to be able to do them instead of going through a doctor who very well may not have access or agrees with the treatment.

I got the Moderna vaccine in March, I think it is safe, I did not have any adverse reaction to it. Some people who got it did say they had a fever for a day, or similar but no one I know had adverse effects, no one I know died from taking any vaccine. But I know people who died because they got covid.

That all being I will acknowledge there is another side to all this but I think for the most part vaccination is the way out of this pandemic.