But do they acquire and pass it on at the same rate?
3 Likes
There are so many wrong things there to correct. Sobriety and careful driving decreases your chance of being in an accident in the first place - but not to zero. There are other drivers on the road too, who may cause you to have an accident through no fault of your own (exactly analogous to how COVID can spread too despite precautions being taken by some). Racing drivers?! Are you kidding? They even have special four-point harnesses they use because they of all people know how dangerous it is to not be secured in place.
While it is true that healthy young people are less likely to die than older ones or ones with other health issues, their death rate from COVID of 18-29 year olds still is not zero. And their probability of helping spread it is far, far from zero.
This is like pointing to the extremely few cases where somebody’s seatbelt actually did kill them by trapping them in a car and taking that as evidence that people shouldn’t use restraint. Even with that very rare possibility considered, it is still stupid for people to drive without seatbelts. And no - the vaccine has killed extremely few of the people who have taken it (0.0017% to be more exact - of 310 million doses given in the U.S. according to VAERS as of June 2021). And it’s probably a good bet
that most of those deaths were people who had other health issues going on. It’s reality, Nick.
2 Likes
These are also kids who will probably have permanently damaged lungs.
5 Likes
Technically parents can choose to put 2 masks and a face shield on a child and avoid packed public spaces. Though thus far the odds of a child getting sick and dying have been astronomically low if I understand them correctly. Possibly comparable to being struck by lightning. In some sense people have to bare responsibility and protect themselves and their families. I know for certain if I had an underlying condition and couldn’t vaccinate, I would not expect the whole world to stop and wear masks on account of me. I would mask up, put on a shield, curbside pick-up and so on. Too many people want to vilify all the unvaccinated and unmasked as if they are rolling the dice with other people’s lives. You roll your own dice when you choose to go outside without a mask and face shield. Limit your interactions, double mask and shield, you should be fine.
Of course, public schools complicate the issue.
Vaccine data suggests that any long-term side effects are known within about 3 months. The mRNA it does not have the capability to affect you that far down the line because it does not linger in your body.
I will say, that this Delta variant is proving to be much more damaging. I know folks who are working in completely full pediatric units and full hospitals, even though they used to think it didn’t affect children that badly. And I also have a healthy friend who is actually an epidemiologist who contracted it, and she has had long-COVID, including everything she eats tasting rotten for months so far. It may seem like “just a cold and then it will be over” but it also has the potentially to be much worse. I personally know someone who developed a rapid advancing lung disease after having covid and died in two weeks.
I think overall for me, the long-lasting KNOWN possible effects of contracting the virus (permanent lung damage, mental fog, taste/smell, neurological problems, death) far outweigh the possible effects of the vaccine, which, so far, has not actually lent to very many issues, and no death. Many of the side effects people are reporting are also effects that you can see if you actually get COVID, but worse. For example:
There have been 594 confirmed reports of myocarditis or pericarditis after over 180 million people have received at least one dose. These cases are generally mild, and there have been NO fatalities.
SARS-CoV-2 causes myocarditis at a significantly higher rate than vaccination. One study has shown that up to 60% of recovered hospitalized COVID-19 patients have evidence of myocarditis. It has also been seen in patients with mild symptoms. A recent study at the Ohio State University showed that 15% of collegiate athletes with COVID-19 had evidence of myocarditis.
Things with very low chances like Guillan-Barre are a factor in every vaccine, and affects a very very small number of people. I would look into some visual charts comparing the number of people vaccinated to those with severe side effects if that helps.
These people put out some great content on fact checking and myth debunking. https://www.instagram.com/unbiasedscipod/?hl=en
They helped put the “blood clots” concern in perspective. I face a higher risk of blood clots due to birth control meds I took for a decade than the J&J vaccine that was a cause for concern earlier this year. Drs. Andrea Love and Jess Steier | Unbiased Science on Instagram: "More than 6.8 million doses of the Johnson and Johnson (Janssen) vaccine have been administered in the US. Six cases of a type of blood clot, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) have been reported. As a result, the CDC and FDA are temporarily pausing the administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine across the country in order to review data tomorrow, April 14th. It’s important to note that so far, this risk of developing a blood clot after receiving the J&J vaccine is 0.000088%. Each of these instances were observed in women between the ages 18 and 48, and symptoms developed between 6 and 13 days after vaccination. We do not yet know about additional confounding factors such as other medical conditions, medication history, etc. That is what the review will dissect. But, how does this risk compare to other incidences of blood clotting? In the general public, the risk of developing blood clots (including DVT, VTE, and others) is about 0.1%, with 300,000-500,000 blood clotting events reported annually in the US (population 351 million). The risk of developing clots as a result of COVID-19 ITSELF is quite high: it can be up to 30% particularly for those who are hospitalized in the ICU, but can also be up to 8% for those with moderate COVID-19 requiring hospitalization. Amongst people who take hormonal birth control, the risk of developing blood clots ranges between 0.3% to 1%. What does this tell us? The risk of CVST as a result of the J&J vaccine is EXTREMELY small. It is an exceedingly rare occurrence, and as of now, there is no definitive causal relationship. These clots are rarer than the general incidence of clots amongst the general population, and are orders of magnitude less rare than the clotting complications of COVID-19. If you have received your J&J vaccine, there is no reason to worry. Regulatory review is there for a reason, and we will continue to update as things evolve. Note: this rare occurrence of CVST has NOT occurred with the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines. This has been reported for the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is still being administered globally after review determined the benefits outweighed the extremely small risk."
Hope this helps!
7 Likes
Uh, no. How many are enough? Surviving with some kind of permanent damage is another negligible statistic too, right?
from July 31 to Aug. 6, 216 children with Covid were being hospitalized every day,
Uh, yeah. Notice the dates on the cited statistic.
They are not comparable risks.
Please read the info at this link about the information coming to light about the Delta variant and the statistics about the side effects of vaccines. If you are hearing people say “we just don’t know about vaccines” they are peddling fear and ignorance. Over 2 billion people are fully vaccinated globally, we know tons about vaccines. The idea that some side effect of a vaccine could show up years from now is pure BS. We’ve been giving vaccines for 200 years. We understand how they and human immune responses work at the molecular level. Nothing about what vaccines might do in the body is mysterious and we know that no one ever has a reaction to a vaccine or experiences a side-effect of a vaccine outside of a six-week window because of well-understood biological facts. It’s just an imagined thing to be afraid of if people are citing “effects ten years from now.” That’s not a real thing.
Right now I have a friend intubated and possibly dying in a hospital in Mexico. She is young, healthy, and already had COVID several months ago. She was unable to get a vaccine in Mexico. The Delta variant is killing her. Don’t think a lack of pre-existing conditions or youth is going to protect you. A vaccine will. (edited to be more accurate with my stat) Less that 1% of the vaccinated public is experiencing breakthrough infections.
9 Likes
There is much that we don’t understand about both the vaccines and COVID-19. But you can join the billions of people in the world like myself who have volunteered to be guinea pigs for this vaccine and one day the vaccines may even be approved by the FDA.
Yep… I finally got the first shot with my youngest son (pfizer) and will get the second at the beginning of next week. Then 80% of my (at home) family will be vaccinated with my mother being the only holdout.
1 Like
Just because they haven’t cleared the FDA’s red tape does not make anyone a guinea pig. The more noble ones are those who volunteered for the initial trials, not anyone since. The CDC and the NIH signed off on them, didn’t they.
So you are saying the procedures the FDA requires for approving vaccines have no good reason for them and is nothing but a bunch of red tape?
Hmmm… when I read the warnings on the little paper they gave me saying I was taking a vaccine not approved of by the FDA… a guinea pig is exactly what I felt like.
1 Like
The pandemic is a global health emergency, and all three trial phases of the vaccines were completed successfully. The current crisis in the U.S is “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” and anyone delaying getting a vaccine is contributing unless they stay completely homebound.
1 Like
And we see right here why God doesn’t provide proof for His existence. Some people will so quickly leap for any excuse for self-righteousness that they can find, however bizarre it may seem to the rest of us. Perhaps we can call it the bane of His existence.
Note from moderation: It is the expressed desire of the BioLogos organization to promote solid science-based evidence, encourage everyone to get vaccinated, and equip readers to work against vaccine hesitancy in their communities.
Posts that evangelistically cite vaccine misinformation, posts that discourage people from getting the vaccine, and posts intended to foment distrust in the medical or scientific community that is developing and promoting vaccines WILL BE REMOVED.
If you would like to discuss this further with the moderation team, feel free to send a PM to @moderators.
In the meantime, please flag posts that need to be removed.
4 Likes
I was very interested to read this in the link provided above on the delta variant…
Random mutations occur due to errors in the viral replication process. While coronaviruses have an enzyme which corrects most of those mistakes, some do still slip through to create a new variant.
It seems mutagenesis is not completely random in ALL viruses after all. It looks like some of the viruses repair their DNA just like bacteria and we do. It makes the corona viruses that much more scary.
1 Like
Or repair their RNA, in the case of viruses.
1 Like
I was trying to find out what proportion of viruses use RNA rather than DNA. No luck, except comparing lists of each, it does look like more of them use RNA. What I did find out that is that RNA viruses have a higher mutation rate while DNA viruses are more stable.
With RNA and a repair mechanism this means Covid mutates faster and more effectively to evade our defenses.
Interesting. That seems to contradict this quote in the Covid-19: The Delta Variant article linked above…
What’s the reason for the discrepancy?
The Delta variant was responsible for fewer than 1% of the cases in the US in April. It is now responsible for the vast majority of cases. (99% in Michigan in the last four weeks, for example.)
You can’t necessarily apply stats from studies on the original strains to the current situation and assume their projections will hold up. There are new studies being done and you have to look at the numbers that deal with the Delta variant.
The unvaccinated are in serious danger now.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/13/children-hospitalizations-covid-delta/
7 Likes
Maybe a doctor can weigh in, but as I understand it, there are two factors that lead to different symptoms. The Delta variant is a slightly different virus and interacts with the human body in slightly different ways compared to the other strains. Secondly, in vaccinated people the virus encounters antibodies that are somewhat effective in helping to fight off the infection in the blood stream, before it gets to the lungs. But it still is able to multiply fairly effectively in the mucus membranes of the nose and mouth, contributing to a heightened immune response in the sinuses.
I don’t see a “discrepancy” in CDC guidance. It isn’t based on some objective truth like “masks are wonderful,” it’s based on real time statistical analysis, current transmission rates, current hospitalization rates, and what is known about how the virus is currently spreading based on human behavior. There are things we can’t control like how infectious a virus is or how sick people get with it, but the CDC is going to make changing recommendations based on changing variables when it relates to the things we can control that inhibit the spread of infections. They aren’t “changing their minds” they are adjusting their advice to fit the situation today and what is being learned on a daily basis about a strain of virus we have not encountered before.
3 Likes