A vaccine will not be the COVID-19 panacea
rickdugan
Verified and Certifiable Super-Reviewer
For those who believe that a vaccine will be the cure for the current COVID-19 pandemic, as yourselves this: Has the flu vaccine removed the flu from this world? If not, why not?
Part of the issue of course is the mutating nature of the flu virus. Every year it is a crap shoot whether they flu vaccine will be effective against whichever new strain makes its way into the population. But beyond that, an overwhelming majority of young people do not get the flu shot each year. Why does anyone think that a COVID-19 vaccine will be any different?
Indeed, count me in as someone who will not put a rushed to market vaccine into my children to protect them from something that isn't dangerous to them in the first place. I also have no doubt that a sizable majority of other parents will feel the same way.
Similarly, most young adults are unlikely to participate for the same reasons.
Even among the middle aged and elderly, there are sizable percentages who choose not to get a flu shot each year and many of them will no doubt decline a COVID-19 shot as well.
What are we going to do, try to force them? We cannot force any adult. I also doubt that many school system are going to be able to add COVID-19 vaccinations to their list of required shots - the backlash would be massive.
I think we need to get used to the notion that we are just going to have to find a way to manage through until is washes out.
Part of the issue of course is the mutating nature of the flu virus. Every year it is a crap shoot whether they flu vaccine will be effective against whichever new strain makes its way into the population. But beyond that, an overwhelming majority of young people do not get the flu shot each year. Why does anyone think that a COVID-19 vaccine will be any different?
Indeed, count me in as someone who will not put a rushed to market vaccine into my children to protect them from something that isn't dangerous to them in the first place. I also have no doubt that a sizable majority of other parents will feel the same way.
Similarly, most young adults are unlikely to participate for the same reasons.
Even among the middle aged and elderly, there are sizable percentages who choose not to get a flu shot each year and many of them will no doubt decline a COVID-19 shot as well.
What are we going to do, try to force them? We cannot force any adult. I also doubt that many school system are going to be able to add COVID-19 vaccinations to their list of required shots - the backlash would be massive.
I think we need to get used to the notion that we are just going to have to find a way to manage through until is washes out.
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51 comments
The death rate on this Covid thing is less than 0.1% and we mostly know who will be affected. So I am not scared of it at all. If I were 75 years old and 50 lbs overweight, I might have a different attitude though.
Total Covid-19 cases: 1,219,066
Total Covid-19 deaths: 73,297
Mortality rate: 6.0%
Where do you get the impression anything is being "rushed?" 12 months to a year and a half is pretty much the standard. The CDC and the FDA has a rigorous approval process so it exactly does not cause harm. There are always exceptions where some have issues but if they are much much lower than the bug itself then why not take it?
If you want to go all anti-vaxer then that's I guess your choice to risk yourself and your kids. The risk of not getting the approved vaccine is pretty much becoming known through the numbers.
They first year I was in the hospital for 4 days and went home using oxygen. The last time in December 2019, I was only in for 2 1/2 days. That 1/2 day was just the hospital preparing me for discharge. And I went home without oxygen. So I do believe in the benefits of vaccines. And if they come out with one for the current virus, I'll get on as long as there are no dangers or side effects.
I haven't had the flu in many years and I know that each strain is different and they never know for sure which one to vaccinate for but I get a flu shot every year as soon as they become available. It can't hurt!
What I do want before I am ready to go back to normal is a proven effective antibiotic to treat this virus if I should happen to get it.
Meanwhile my bank account grows.
Hasn't anyone told you that slapping a silly label on an opposing position is a sign of mental and emotional weakness? It's what teenage girls and writers for Huffpost do.
As far as your points, our history of vaccines is riddled with examples of vaccines that had to be recalled and/or re-engineered because earlier versions proved to be more dangerous than originally thought. This includes some that were approved by the FDA, which is under tremendous pressure now to expedite approval for one for COVID-19.
My kids are most certainly vaccinated for the things that can kill them, further debunking your silly "anti-vaxer" label. But I'm not putting anything into them that hasn't had years of successful use, especially for a disease that isn't very dangerous for them anyway. You can bet that many other parents will feel the same way.
Everyone has a right to live life as they see fit. I choose to go out to any place open. I even met my favorite constable to hand him papers to serve in person, rather than scan and email them. I plan on going out as much as possible and since I have 3 very ill relatives in Florida, the minute I feel I can drive down without the Governments of the states to the South of me fucking me over because of my license plate I will do so. Imagine being concerned about driving through other states in a land that is supposed to be one country.
/ˌan(t)ēˈvaksər,ˌan(t)īˈvaksər/
nounINFORMAL
a person who is opposed to vaccination, typically a parent who does not wish to vaccinate their child.
"experts say several diseases that are avoidable are making a comeback due to anti-vaxxers who refuse to vaccinate their kids"
Gee RickiBoi you’d never stoop to slapping a silly label on on anyone you disagree with nothing like a scared rabbit or teenage girl or horrors a Huff Post Writer.
I didn't realize that you were among the scared rabbits that you were referring to, but if the shoe fits... ;) Also, I guess you didn't understand the nuance of what I posted immediately above.
But with that said, I will admit that I was being intentionally outrageous. Your complaint has been heard and noted. But if this another never-ending troll derailment on your part, then I'm going to mute your additional comments.
Exactly Salty. And if you were 30 or under, you'd probably be asking the same question about yourself. I suspect that even once a vaccine is discovered, widespread adoption will be unlikely. What we really need IMHO is something that lessens the impact of the infection, like Tamiflu does for the flu if you take it early enough.
There is a decent chance Covid will be the new flu. Without a vaccine the flu would kill way more people every year than it does. And yeah even if a vaccine is 40 percent effective that means less spread and the people who become sick usually get less sick and recover quicker.
If you’ll take the time to note I have not responded in kind just asked a very simple and legitimate question
w.r.t. vaccines - yeah - no one knows how effective they will be - but the entire freaking scientific community all over the fucking world is working on them yet we constantly have armchair-epidemiologists stating what will work or not work - an ax-grinder is not a scientist - btw, AFAIK the polio vaccine was very successful as well as many other vaccines - thus saying a vaccine will not work for x.y, or z reason is grossly premature at best.
w.rt. vaccines, I don't like them - I've only had the flu vaccine once back in the mid-90s and I got sicker that I'd ever been in my life and that was the first and last time I got it - I've also heard of others having similar results in that they got severely ill post a flu-vaccine - doesn't mean I'm 100% opposed to vaccines, just that I avoid them if I can (I assume a certain minority of folks maybe just react a bit differently w.r.t. certain vaccines) - w.r.t. a Corona vaccine, I'd probably get it b/c Corona is a different animal, but I'd probably wait a month or two to see how it goes w/ the early-adopters.
and *bodies* being stored in trailers
40+% of children don't even get vaccinated for a flu that presents some level of risk to them. What % of parents are going to line them up for yet another vaccine - and an unproven one at that - for something that, on the whole, has been benign to children? A significant minority I suspect.
The reason that most parents vaccinate for polio, etc., is because they are horrible diseases with absurd mortality and many other crippling consequences. But it's going to be a much harder sell to introduce a new vaccine for something that won't likely harm the kids anyway and some ambiguous community containment concept ain't gonna' cut it.
You all may want to give more thought to other potential courses of action and forget about pinning your hopes on a vaccine being developed anytime soon. Just sayin’
One faction of Anti-Vaxxer philosophy is oriented around there is a .000001% chance of having a bad reaction to vaccines for diseases I probably will never get or have a personal risk of getting ill from. So they skip it. But that decision affects others too and limits the ability to eradicate diseases. That's why diseases like measles have made a comeback.
That was my point of bringing up that "label" since it fit with your line of thinking.
My point was that people are spinning their mental wheels concerning things that are both theoretical and unlikely. IMO it is not helpful just as the idiotic focus on ventilators as some kind of essential treatment or cure was an insane waste of time, effort and money. I knew this at the time as did anyone with an understanding but now that there has been a post mortem of the use of ventilators the official results are in. Of those 66 years old or older put on a ventilator, 97.2% died, and those 65 and under had about 76% death rate. Overall death rate was 88.8% in the study. Hardly a miracle treatment.
And yet all the politicians along with the idiot/asshole media talking heads convinced the public that there was a shortage and that getting/manufacturing more was critical.
I'm just suggesting that the most uncommon thing of all, common sense, should start replacing all of this nonsense.
I can't speak to why more people don't do it, but I can share my reason. After one of my kids had a horrible reaction one year, that was it for my family. Now, when the flu hits one of my kids every few years or so, we isolate the child and start Tamiflu right away. 2-3 days later all better, easy peasy.
It's pretty clear now it mainly hits older men, especially the obese and smokers.
But Papi_Chulo and JamesSD are largely correct. Its really scary to imagine how bad things could've gotten if we didn't shut down. Italy's excess mortality rates indicate that 56,000 people have died in Italy. Give Italy the same population as the US and that would've been close to 300,000 deaths.
The mortality rate is not 6% but it is probably around 1%. Unbelievably stupid to claim that the mortality rate is 0.1%. In order for that to be true, the US would've had to have at least 78 million people infected. That's 25% of the entire population of the US. Even the people we test don't turn out to be infected at that high of a rate. We've conducted 8.6 million tests and 1.3 million of them came back positive. That means about 16-17% of tests come back positive. Obviously people who are going in to get tested are much much more likely to be infected than the general population is.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/09/it-pays-…
That might be true if those programs were effective and efficiently managed, but I have spoken with a number of workers over the last several weeks, less than 1 out of 5 has actually received any payment from UE ins and I know a few dozen folks like myself that have not received the stimulus payment, by the time it will be received it’ll be too late.
So we just don't know what could have been. But what we do now know, for certain, is that this kills old people and spares pretty much everyone else. We also know that we have paid a horribly steep price for this, which we will pay with poverty, social ills and even lives for years to come. So it's time for a different approach now, preferably one designed to protect the vulnerable while allowing the young to do what they are supposed to do, which is to live their lives and produce.
When can I get my covid vaccine at Panera?
If there’s a discount on a sandwich - that would be much appreciated!