I often told others when Covid began & the vax first came out: "Look... we're all on the SS-Covid Titanic. We only have 2 choices: Jump or go down with the ship... Taking a new vaccine that was created at lightning speed was a little scary... -- (plus many assumed it was a "sterilizing" vax=you'd be 99% protected from getting Covid/sprea…
I often told others when Covid began & the vax first came out: "Look... we're all on the SS-Covid Titanic. We only have 2 choices: Jump or go down with the ship... Taking a new vaccine that was created at lightning speed was a little scary... -- (plus many assumed it was a "sterilizing" vax=you'd be 99% protected from getting Covid/spreading/etc.) -- but what other choices did we have? We either "Jumped/got vaxed" or "went down with the ship/risked Covid death, long Covid and/or the long-term consequences of viral 'hibernation' in the body... like Chicken Pox or Epstein-Barr virus... What enraged me had to do with those who were "upset/angry" that I had the 'audacity' to wear a mask to protect my own life!
The crazy thing was that I was listening to some reputable podcasts that actually explained what the data meant and that there was no way to tell it was 'sterilizing' based on the data. It's sad because seriously getting a 95% effective vaccine was REALLY REALLY Good news, it just wasn't the complete get out of jail free card people wanted.
Great point. also, people failed to understand that you might still get COVID even though you were vaccinated, and that the point of vaccination was to diminish the severity and impact of COVID, not physically prevent its transmission. Too subtle for people who feel entitled to simple answers and what they want when they want it. Grown ups welcome.
I still wear a mask at times. It is an Airgame mask which is no longer available but is very distinctive. If someone asks me why I am wearing a mask I tell them it is to prevent them from getting my "Europa" stain of Covid. I hope if they Google it they will realize it is none of their business why I wear the mask.
" (plus many assumed it was a "sterilizing" vax=you'd be 99% protected from getting Covid/spreading/etc.) -- but what other choices did we have?"
And there we some voices arguing that mass vaccination with a non sterilizing vaccine in the middle of a pandemic could put extreme evolutionary pressure on the virus, but they were shouted down, silenced, and canceled. And then came the Omicron variant which was suspected of either escaping from a lab or having mutated in an immune compromised person who had received the vaccine.
Please note, the argument was against MASS vaccination, not against vaccinating those at high or elevated risk.
So you are saying it would have been better to allow people to die instead of mass vaccination? And how would we know about who has elevated risk and who does not when it was a novel virus? Maybe if it were more like a hemorrhagic virus (Ebola), people would have dropped their ignorant ape-egos because they fear the sight of blood? lol... The spread of other unknown zoonotic diseases will just be a repeat lesson for the human-apes until we either go extinct or grow some brains to understand "If one person isn't safe, then nobody is safe..." That's the law of disease that is contagious when a deadly virus is only a plane ride away...
You do realize that a sterilizing vaccine is almost a completely unralistic scenario, correct? And for a coronavirus, it's virtually impossible. As Paul Offit recently observed, a respiratory virus with a very short incubation period is unlikely to be successfully eradicated by a vaccine.
I maintain, however, that we had an extremely brief window during the initial phases of mass vaccination to have gotten enough people at least in the US vaccinated that we might have made progress toward shutting down the pandemic. It couldn't last because other countries had poor access to the very successful (against the ancestral strain) mRNA vaccines, but it could well have provided a breathing space we could have used to our advantage, and if at least 85% had been vaccinated in the first 7-8 weeks, we'd have seen a significantly different outcome.
(DISCLOSURE: The percentage needed to vaccinate fully, and time period were based on my own calculations at the time.)
Since we started seeing significant anti-vaccine messaging almost immediately, and without cause, save some unknown malign intent, we never saw anything near achieving that level of coverage. And, indeed, Trump and his surrogates, especially on talk radio and online social media did significant damage in this regard. One of Trump's biggest accomplishments was certainly funding Warp Speed. That said, he questioned the utility of vaccination, and of the validity and reality of the outbreak, and didn't even disclose until much later that he and his family had been vaccinated. Instead, he often gave the impression, while admitting little in terms of verifiable fact, that he didn't need to be vaccinated. Had he encouraged vaccination, had he been shown receiving his vaccinations on television, a significant number of his followers would likely have followed suit and not suffered the dangers of subsequent infection.
I often told others when Covid began & the vax first came out: "Look... we're all on the SS-Covid Titanic. We only have 2 choices: Jump or go down with the ship... Taking a new vaccine that was created at lightning speed was a little scary... -- (plus many assumed it was a "sterilizing" vax=you'd be 99% protected from getting Covid/spreading/etc.) -- but what other choices did we have? We either "Jumped/got vaxed" or "went down with the ship/risked Covid death, long Covid and/or the long-term consequences of viral 'hibernation' in the body... like Chicken Pox or Epstein-Barr virus... What enraged me had to do with those who were "upset/angry" that I had the 'audacity' to wear a mask to protect my own life!
The crazy thing was that I was listening to some reputable podcasts that actually explained what the data meant and that there was no way to tell it was 'sterilizing' based on the data. It's sad because seriously getting a 95% effective vaccine was REALLY REALLY Good news, it just wasn't the complete get out of jail free card people wanted.
Great point. also, people failed to understand that you might still get COVID even though you were vaccinated, and that the point of vaccination was to diminish the severity and impact of COVID, not physically prevent its transmission. Too subtle for people who feel entitled to simple answers and what they want when they want it. Grown ups welcome.
I still wear a mask at times. It is an Airgame mask which is no longer available but is very distinctive. If someone asks me why I am wearing a mask I tell them it is to prevent them from getting my "Europa" stain of Covid. I hope if they Google it they will realize it is none of their business why I wear the mask.
" (plus many assumed it was a "sterilizing" vax=you'd be 99% protected from getting Covid/spreading/etc.) -- but what other choices did we have?"
And there we some voices arguing that mass vaccination with a non sterilizing vaccine in the middle of a pandemic could put extreme evolutionary pressure on the virus, but they were shouted down, silenced, and canceled. And then came the Omicron variant which was suspected of either escaping from a lab or having mutated in an immune compromised person who had received the vaccine.
Please note, the argument was against MASS vaccination, not against vaccinating those at high or elevated risk.
So you are saying it would have been better to allow people to die instead of mass vaccination? And how would we know about who has elevated risk and who does not when it was a novel virus? Maybe if it were more like a hemorrhagic virus (Ebola), people would have dropped their ignorant ape-egos because they fear the sight of blood? lol... The spread of other unknown zoonotic diseases will just be a repeat lesson for the human-apes until we either go extinct or grow some brains to understand "If one person isn't safe, then nobody is safe..." That's the law of disease that is contagious when a deadly virus is only a plane ride away...
You do realize that a sterilizing vaccine is almost a completely unralistic scenario, correct? And for a coronavirus, it's virtually impossible. As Paul Offit recently observed, a respiratory virus with a very short incubation period is unlikely to be successfully eradicated by a vaccine.
I maintain, however, that we had an extremely brief window during the initial phases of mass vaccination to have gotten enough people at least in the US vaccinated that we might have made progress toward shutting down the pandemic. It couldn't last because other countries had poor access to the very successful (against the ancestral strain) mRNA vaccines, but it could well have provided a breathing space we could have used to our advantage, and if at least 85% had been vaccinated in the first 7-8 weeks, we'd have seen a significantly different outcome.
(DISCLOSURE: The percentage needed to vaccinate fully, and time period were based on my own calculations at the time.)
Since we started seeing significant anti-vaccine messaging almost immediately, and without cause, save some unknown malign intent, we never saw anything near achieving that level of coverage. And, indeed, Trump and his surrogates, especially on talk radio and online social media did significant damage in this regard. One of Trump's biggest accomplishments was certainly funding Warp Speed. That said, he questioned the utility of vaccination, and of the validity and reality of the outbreak, and didn't even disclose until much later that he and his family had been vaccinated. Instead, he often gave the impression, while admitting little in terms of verifiable fact, that he didn't need to be vaccinated. Had he encouraged vaccination, had he been shown receiving his vaccinations on television, a significant number of his followers would likely have followed suit and not suffered the dangers of subsequent infection.