That is a red herring and/or a straw man argument, speaking of collapsing.
My two grandchildren breezed through COVID, no problem, harmless
…is the impression you give.
Fact, not impression.
Straw man:
“Essentially, the person using the strawman pretends to attack their opponent’s stance, while in reality they are actually attacking a distorted version of that stance…”
Since no one called Covid harmless, the straw man was not my technique. It was the technique of the one pretending others called the virus harmless.
I understand the desire to support one’s position. It should not be with the sacrifice of truth.
Harmless? You way overstate your grasp of the situation.
Try to skim read through this: (sorryantivaxxer.com). Note their ages.
And note - this site didn’t include everybody they could have who died of COVID - but just those from among vocal antivaxxers.
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@Sam, greetings.
I don’t understand. This does not sound at all like you or others that post on this forum. I know that you and all Christians care for the weak and the aged. 1 out of 332 Americans (1 million) have died.
That is 2.5 times the total number that died in WW II.
I have had quite a few patients die in my practice. Of those that survived, many (some in their 40s and older)r have persistent lung, memory, and weakness problems.
When the vaccine came along, the death rate dramatically decreased (the comparison is 80:1, unvaccinated to vaccinated risk). I am grateful.
Have you watched the Zdogg podcast posted by @jpm? I thin you would find it interesting. it talks about how some of us focus more on liberty as the ultimate good, and others on the collective good of a group as the ultimate good (maybe I’m saying that wrong) It explains, to a point, why some of us hate masks, and others support them more readily.
Masks & The Moral Matrix: Why We’re So Divided Over COVID-19 - ZDoggMD
I know it can be frustrating.
I wonder if things would look less like an incursion on liberty if we can look at it from Dr Fauci’s point of view. I have followed him on and off since 2001 (he wrote the infectious disease part of Harrisons’ text on Internal Medicine, a bedrock book for medicine; and was known as the only one in government who would listen to those who suffered from AIDS. His children would wait till 9 pm to eat supper with their father, as he was working so late, trying to serve people; and he worked with President Bush to save millions of widows and orphans in Africa with HIV with anti-AIDS drugs). Imagine getting news from China of a disease that appeared to spread like wildfire, and killed many of the people it affected. How would we feel for responsibility, if we had potentially millions die? If it had not been for him, it is likely many more would have died–certainly in my practice without the shot, many would have.
Thank you for your discussion.
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When the vaccine came out my friend’s wife who is a nurse got it, and had nearly paralyzing pain for 24 hours. Another friend said he experienced pain in his eye unlike anything he ever experienced. His friend had a stroke after being vaccinated. I know this is unscientific, but that scared me. I know the virus was bad. I was not in total denial. But neither was I in a high risk group. So I hesitated on being vaccinated, and was beginning to come around, but then got the virus in the summer of 21 and presumably had the delta variant. So at that point I was not going to be vaccinated and faced the possibility I would lose my job over that decision. Also, in the fall of 21, another friend who was active in his fifties had a sudden heart attack a few weeks after being vaccinated and died.
What angered me a lot was how our frontline workers put their lives at risk early in the pandemic when a vaccine was not available. And were later purged from the camp when they made an informed decision not to get the vaccine, which was probably due to having acquired immunity.
Good questions! I am sorry it is so difficult.
Briefly, there are good answers, too, but it’s not always clear.
One of the reasons for the vaccine after the illness is that Covid escapes our defenses to re infect us. CDC published this to discuss the reasons for vaccination after Covid
Their epidemiologists and infectious disease experts have hundreds of years more experience and studying than I do, and I recommend reading the summary at the top. One of the points is that if we catch a mild disease after first illness, we can still give that to the very weak and ill in the hospital. A vaccine has boosted immunity, with some indications that it may be better than, for example, a mild case of Covid. The statement, which has about 100 bibliography references from excellent studies and was the consensus of many professionals, was not glib.
It is not easy to make that decision.
Our health system opted not to require the vaccine if they had documented Covid. That may change, I think, if we have a more virulent type come around–like this fall.
I had a horrendous muscle ache after the shot. An aunt wound up with lymph node inflammation for a week.
It made me realize how awful the real thing can be. The worst thing I can think of is for me to give Covid to one of my frail patients or family members, and have them die, because I did not get a booster.
Thanks.
Addendum: the rules are stricter for us, as we are more likely to spread Covid. I’m not trying to make you or anyone feel bad for not getting the shot! It is not an easy question, for healthcare workers too Sorry. Thanks.
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“5-year-olds seem to have almost no symptoms. My two granddaughters that age breezed through Covid.”
"Do you think Covid is worse than the flu for 5-year-old children?
Maybe so, but the risk of Covid to healthy 5-year-olds seems very, very small."
"By the way, I contracted Covid in April on a tour of Columbia. My wife and I spent 6 days in isolation in a hotel in Bogota.
We felt bad for 2 days. We coughed at bedtime for two weeks.
The two years of masks and restrictions were far worse than the disease."
It seems like you are trying to downplay the potential harm of the infection, unless I am reading it wrong.
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The majority of deaths were in those above 50, but that is hardly the only impact. Younger people are still suffering from the after effects of COVID infection (long COVID), and there are many who had to be hospitalized with symptoms like myocarditis and lung dysfunction.
Even with a substantial number of people vaccinated our area hospitals were nearly overwhelmed when the Omicron wave hit. We were just a few ICU beds away from having to triage patients which is essentially choosing which people will live and which will die because they don’t get an ICU bed. Nearly every ICU bed was filled by a COVID patient, and nearly all of them were unvaccinated. If there had not been lockdowns and other precautions at the beginning of the pandemic it would have been massively worse.
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The hospital I am associated with has had vaccine requirements for decades now. For the last 25 years I have been required to get a vaccine every fall. This wasn’t anything new for the hospital I was at. Religious and medical exemptions were offered for the COVID vaccine just like every other mandated vaccine for the decades before that.
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Can you speak to the reduced benefit of flu vaccines when taken repeatedly over time?
It’s our policy to remove conspiracy theories and COVID misinformation. Don’t post such stuff, and you won’t get “censored.”
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heymike3, I am not aware that that is a thing. Any references/sources? Certainly, some years it is more effective than others depending on whether the particular strain is matched well or not to the circulating strain, but I am not aware of decreased efficacy due to repeated vaccination. Only mechanism I can think of is if you had high circulating antibodies to the vaccine given, it might be neutralized and not boost the immune response to similar antigens in the vaccine, but my knowledge of immunology is superficial.
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I don’t have any specific knowledge of that data. However, it is my impression that the flu shot is different each year since they tailor it to the strains they expect to be circulating for that flu season. Also, people don’t seem to become more susceptible to the same flu strain after multiple injections, so I don’t see why repeated flu shots with the same vaccine would reduce immunity.
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“This fits with findings on immune response to vaccination that suggest repeated influenza vaccination can weaken the immune response to vaccination and especially to the H3N2 vaccine component.”
Nice article, but I see nothing that supports the statement that they have reduced value when taken repeatedly over time. Maybe I misunderstood your statement. it seemed to imply that repeated flu vaccination resulted in decreased efficacy, but perhaps you were just wondering why the vaccine varies in effectiveness from year to year, which is explained in that article.
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Not sure how you missed the quote. You can search the page using google chrome.
Digging a little further, I found this:
2014 study based on 8 seasons:
“Current- and previous-season vaccination generated similar levels of protection, and vaccine-induced protection was greatest for individuals not vaccinated during the prior 5 years. Additional studies are needed to understand the long-term effects of annual vaccination.”
2021 study based on 2 seasons:
“Our findings support Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendations for annual influenza vaccination. Benefits of current season vaccination varied among participants with and without prior season vaccination, by virus type/subtype and season.”
I’m not quite sure what this has to do with COVID-19 since its a different virus. Is it supposed to be an argument against COVID-19 boosters? Or getting vaccinated after getting infected?
But looking at your second study there, Effects of Prior Season Vaccination on Current Season Vaccine Effectiveness in the United States Flu Vaccine Effectiveness Network, 2012-2013 Through 2017-2018…
All three of the cohorts (vaccinated in both seasons, the former, or the latter) showed better outcomes than those vaccinated in neither, and if you were vaccinated in a prior season, getting vaccinated again reduced your odds of getting infected depending on the strain. So it’s not really an argument against repeated vaccinations, and you yourself copied the findings that the recommendation is for the annual influenza vaccine.
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Thanks! I guess I just gave up by the time I got that far down. Reading further and looking at their more up to date references, this seems to be a good meta-analysis of the data, which shows some lower efficacy in H3N2 but retained efficacy in most strains, and still concludes annual vaccination is of benefit.
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COVID vaccine boosters have already been shown to be effective.
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