The Benefits of Vaccination (with thread drift...)

Paul is a Doctor. I’m guessing he knows a bit more about medical issues than you do.
Also, you remind me of another poster on here. Have you been here before?

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Ooh! Long word!

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In raw figures the UK has had (officially) 127k deaths for 4.4 million cases or 2.85% mortality, yes it is worse in the elderly and better in the under 60’s but the overall survival rate is not the figure that you give.

Worldwide the mortality is about 2%

Utterly different figures and the first is wrong and/or misleading and, for that matter, inconsistent as you just said that “survival is 99.8%” - so is it 0.2% who “don’t tackle the virus” or 1%?

While it is true that the in the phase III trial for Pfizer 162 cases were observed in the placebo group (out of just under 22,000 in that group) or 0.7% that does NOT mean that “the human body is 99% successful at tackling a virus”.

The vaccinated group had just 5% of the cases - which is where the 95% effectiveness figure comes from. However good the human immune system is at tackling the virus the immunized human is 20x better.

Oh, just going back to some of the earlier posts - I’m not going through these at length as I don’t have the time but, presumably, you would advocate not bothering with house insurance because only about 1.8% of house get burgled in an average year? I mean, it’s only 1.8% effective, isn’t it?

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Another person to mute…what fun.

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More generally on the benefits of vaccination I would, of course, agree that vaccination needs to be incredibly safe as it is given to large numbers of healthy people, and people who have a fairly low chance of picking up the illness in question. Of course that low percentage is due to the effectiveness of the vaccine and if you get too many refusals the natural rate will go up - witness the outbreaks of e.g. measles that have cropped up in the last few years.

But, for the people who’s claim is that vaccines are dangerous and “big pharma” are keeping that fact from us consider this:

The AZ vaccine causes a small increase in a vanishingly rare condition and that fact was picked up incredibly quickly. Also, while there was uncertainly initially this information was not suppressed. Now the intensity of the vaccination programme made this a bit easier to pick up but do you honestly believe significant toxicity from other vaccines is slipping through the net?

It’s common sense.

Is a ‘middle’ or ‘moderate’ position still possibly in this debate of extremists? - one that recognises merit - and myopia - on both sides of the pro- and anti- covid vaccine divide?

I can see huge issues on both sides of the ‘understanding of statistics’ scale for example. Side A criticises Side B for one calculation - but ignores the fact that the (probably) huge numbers of untested asymptomatic cases might well render Side B’s figure more accurate. What’s wrong with adopting the really scientific approach and saying ‘we’re not really sure’ - ‘there are still lost of unknowns’?

I believe, on balance, that vaccination is useful - both in general and in the case of covid - but at the same time I also believe there are solid grounds to question the latter’s safety, to question the calculation of relative risk, especially for the young, and I definitely think it is a fundamental right of rational adult individuals to refuse medical treatment. These issues are neither factually, nor ethically as simple as some like to pretend.

I’m reminded of how I felt in the brexit debate, also characterised by extreme positions that could each see no merit in the other’s arguments (where I also felt that although on balance the remain case was sounder, the EU wasn’t perfect either, and the referendum result couldn’t be simply ignored, so the obvious solution was therefore Corbyn’s very soft brexit.) With the issues around covid vaccinations too I don’t see the usefulness of absolute, entrenched positions - I don’t think they persuade anybody, and they’re definitely not ‘scientific’ whichever side they fall on, since scientific truths are always provisional.

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Indeed they aren’t. FWIW I am not sure the AZ vaccine safety profile is acceptable in the longer term scenario where most people are vaccinated and incidence is low but “en plein pandémie” the important thing is to get as many vaccinated as possible.

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source? methinks you’re trying to scare the dumb masses again, there is increasing evidence that folks who have never ever had a vaccine, don’t get cancer either…

nope, scary society when you don’t conform to groupthink and the boomerbook angry crowd eh?
svp arrete d’opprimer les gens et surtout les enfants, je suis dehors

Source - I explained that, go read the post again

WTF

I see Mark Twain1 is right again.

1] Or someone, maybe Yul Brynner
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t’es pas “dehors”, t’es complètement fada ! :crazy_face:

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Since the mass vaccination of the older age groups there has been a significant increase in the number of younger people getting Covid and, of course, it is not just getting Covid yourself, but taking it into your family and friends.

We had a case of a lady in our village developing a clot the day after having the Moderna vaccine.
AZ is not the only vaccine that can cause problems, but not nearly as bad as catching Covid.

They are free riders, ignoring their social responsibility and I believe that , for the good of all of us, those who choose not to be vaccinated should be subject to increased surveillance, testing and, if necessary quarantining.
Their main arguments seem to be against big pharma, but we can all have concerns about that.
Helen has already said in one of her previous posts that she is not convinced about non-symptomatic transmission and I am wondering if she doesn’t belong to the Flat Earth society too.

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The day after is more likely to be a coincidence, and I don’t think a link has been established with Pfizer or Moderna.

I’m not too sure how those 2 statements about me fit together…good job I don’t take offence easily :slightly_smiling_face:

“Healthy children are at almost no risk from COVID-19, with risk of death as low as 1 in 2.5 million9. No previously healthy child under the age of 15 died during the pandemic in the UK and admissions to hospital or intensive care are exceedingly rare10 with most children having no or very mild symptoms. Although Long-Covid has been cited as a reason for vaccinating children, there is little hard data. It appears less common and much shorter-lived than in adults and none of the vaccine trials have studied this outcome11 12. The inflammatory condition, PIMS, was listed as a potential adverse effect in the Oxford AstraZeneca children’s trial13. Naturally acquired immunity will give broader and better lasting immunity than vaccination14. Indeed, many children will already be immune15. Individual children at very high risk can already receive vaccination on compassionate grounds16.

Already, two thirds of the adult population have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine17. Models that assume vaccination of children is required to reach herd immunity have failed to account for the proportion who had immunity prior to March 2020 and those who have acquired it naturally18. Recent modelling suggested that the UK had achieved the required herd immunity threshold on 12 April 2021.19

Children do not transmit SARS-CoV-2 as readily as adults, moreover adults living or working with young children are at lower risk of severe COVID-1920. Schools have not been shown to be the focus on spread to the community, teachers have a lower risk of COVID-19 than other working age adults21.

Taken from here:

https://www.hartgroup.org/open-letter-child-vaccination/

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So you are relying on herd immunity. As I said a free rider.

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You illustrate again the problem I’m trying (obviously without success) to explain Paul. Between Dave’s and this post I had already mentioned that your own figures were incorrect - I tried to depersonalise it which may have disguised the point, so I’ll be more explicit: your own death rate from covid calculation only includes tested cases. There are studies which indicate that tested cases might only be 15% of all cases - many of which, in all studies I’ve seen - are asymptomatic, or go unreported - so the death rate might well be much, much lower than you believe.

Don’t get me wrong - I don’t agree with Dave (or Helen), but I do think pro-vaccine-extremism is also capable of conveniently ignoring the bits of evidence that don’t fit with a preconceived view. It’s happened before in other threads here: the application of figures for relative risks of covid vs vaccination for whole populations to the decisions of individuals or groups within populations - such as healthy young people - for whom the risks are in reality very different.

I got vaccinated - and I’m very happy with that decision - and luckily was not offered the AZ vaccine - which I would not have been happy about; also luckily my kids - 3 of whom are in their 20s (and the other only 17 so still too young) - decided to get vaccinated without asking my opinion, which would have put me in the awkward position of having to defend an ‘I’m not really sure’ position!

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I’m talking about how children are not transmitting the virus…

People can call me whatever names they want to but it won’t change my view as regards children and young people…

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