The flu virus is well known for 'antigenic drift' whereby there are variations from year to year. Those variations are built into the following year's vaccine and usually it matches the current variants. Elderly people certainly do benefit from having the annual vaccination and the vaccine is well-tested by now. Covid-19 is, of course, more serious than seasonal flu and the vaccine is less-tested and has new technology. The risk balance here is to prevent a serious, potentially very unpleasant or fatal illness (with the potential for long term Covid illness), against having a new type of vaccine put into the body. Time will tell. I will just monitor the local situation and if I think I am at serious risk, then I will choose one of the better vaccines. I am hoping for an effective antiviral drug to be found, currently in use for other conditions, well-tested and found safe. Some are currently being tested. This may be the 'golden bullet' which alone, or with vaccination, has the potential to deliver the killer blow.
I think this way: 1. The more replications, the more chances a variant will be produced. 2. If the variant is successful and eats the yellow food, it becomes dominant with or without the vaccine eventually, because it can eat two foods (say it's twice as transmissible). 3. Without a vaccine, you have 60 billion replications a day for illustration. With a vaccine you have 20 billion replications a day. You now have cut the odds of a successful dominant variant- i.e. escapes immunity and has more food - by 2/3. 4. Without a vaccine that variant still occurs, and since it appears it escapes the bodies immune system, will go around the world and reinfect people six months later. Each time there's a new successful variant, we go through the same thing. 5. So it looks to me, that either way we go, vaccine or no vaccine, we deal with new variants, but with vaccines we cut the odds down of a new successful variant occurring. There is no acceleration or pressure involved, the variant is either successful, or it isn't. We also may get a beneficial effect of having less sick people, less people in the ICU, etc. 6. The variants we have now do not appear to have been caused by any vaccines, and they are more transmissible, and some appear to be more virulent. I'm 70, I'll take the vaxx and any boosters, the life expectancy in my family is 77 and the last two years are light walks and finally bed. The Indian variant makes kids sicker, some variants may be more virulent. We live with that, booster shots, and make the best of it.
I think death was/is accepted/expected, just as it is with the Flu even though we have a vaccine. The bigger challenge here is that it was new virus to the human immune system, so there were a lot of unknowns. It spread fast and its morbidity was unknown. Better to err on the side of safety than take our chances. They spikes needed to be managed so as not to overwhelm the heath care system. I suspect that they variants with be better understood and so better decisions can be made. The new variants will also not be new to the human immune system in the way the the original virus was. I have had the two Pfizer shots primarily because I want to get past this whole mess, not because I have concerns on my immune system. We are starting to open up in the US and now the challenge is who has had the shot and who has not. The document is easily faked.
Leave the country if it means my only choice here is Chinese - I would not even stick that up my arse!
I think it is far to early to know that. I am not against the vaccine - my advice is for everyone to do what they think is best for them. I am just playing 'devil's advocate' as so much is unknown. For example, is it more likely variants will arise from multiple replications or from knocking out the milder ones by vaccination? Who knows the answer? (Not WHO, for sure, yet). I do agree that vaccination is having an effect - but that is the short-term result. Will it be the medium to long-term result? No one knows.
Well that doesn't make me feel to good since that's what I got today. I relied on an article published by Bloomberg who seem mostly centered in their reporting, sometimes leaning to the rightwing a bit. They are more a financial publication, definitely not a medical journal. Is there something specific about the Sinovac vaccine that caught you attention?
7. There are those that believe vaccines work and would be happy to have one, except for one developed and manufacturer in a country where the state has full control over what information their scientists, media and citizens can publicly release...and a country that silenced the doctor who tried to give an early warning to the world about covid...and country that refused to give over data to an investigation into the origin of covid...and a country that withheld early scientific data for weeks on the Covid genome, patients and cases...and a country that rolled out their vaccine to foreign countries before releasing the full trial data for peer review...and a country that is using this same vaccine to gain political influence...and a country that hid SARS patients from the WHO. Anything but a Chinese (and possibly Russian) vaccine. I even question if the vaccine they did trials on is the one being manufactured and sent out to other countries. If there were any logical issues with the manufacturing process, which we would never hear about because...well...see all the links above, I'm almost certain they would cut corners as their short term political game is MUCH more to important to them than the health of their citizens, forget about the health and wellbeing of anyone outside their borders.
