Brian W
Conscientious Christian
You look after your health and I'll look after mine thank you very much! I'm not mocking you!!!
Health Issues The Everything Covid 19 Thread
- Thread starter shyvas
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Sorry Brian, you're a nice guy and I shouldn't have singled out your post. I was looking broadly at the whole thread.
I'm glad we agree—we should be allowed to make decisions about our own health.
I was disappointed that my bf does not want to get the booster shot, even after we both had covid.
It hit him harder than me. I try telling him it loses effectiveness over time, but he doesn't want to keep pumping chemicals in his body.
It hit him harder than me. I try telling him it loses effectiveness over time, but he doesn't want to keep pumping chemicals in his body.
When you say you both had it, what symptoms did you both have? Did you need to go to hospital? And if you tested for covid, what else did you test for?
The thing that I've found most puzzling over the past 18 months is that people have been describing what used to be just a bug (cold or flu, undefined). I'm not saying that's trivial, as the flu can be bad news for the compromised and obese, and just a cold can be bad news when you're over 70. The rest of us would miss a couple of days work at most (or zero days for those annoying 'heroes' that go in when they're still ill).
Four or five years ago, before this strange era, a friend (in her 30s and healthier than me) was off work for about a month with a virus. Now it would be front page news.
Since 2021 I've never felt so pressured, actually bullied, to get vaccines that are not only new vaccines, but new types of vaccine, which I took. I have spoken to people that had a bad vaccine experience (more than feeling ill for a few days). We have never tested for a virus this hard before, or tried so hard to attribute one thing as a cause of death (with covid covers a lot of sins).
TLDR. I honestly don't want to make enemies
, but I'm with your boyfriend on this one. I'm glad there are vaccines for those that need and/or want them. I work in science and don't see myself as a crank. Something is not right here.
This my understanding of how it works with regard to vs vines and new variants.
"First, it is possible that a new variant will emerge (by chance) with an altered behaviour that happens to make the virus more transmissible or deadlier. This is not an inevitability. It is just as likely that the virus would mutate to cause more mild disease.
By not effectively stopping the spread of the virus, we are giving the virus more chances to mutate. And the more COVID-19 infections, the greater the chances of a new variant emerging with changed behaviour.
The single best thing we can do to stop new variants emerging is to reduce the number of coronavirus infections worldwide. This is because each new infection has a chance of creating a new variant that behaves differently."
"First, it is possible that a new variant will emerge (by chance) with an altered behaviour that happens to make the virus more transmissible or deadlier. This is not an inevitability. It is just as likely that the virus would mutate to cause more mild disease.
By not effectively stopping the spread of the virus, we are giving the virus more chances to mutate. And the more COVID-19 infections, the greater the chances of a new variant emerging with changed behaviour.
The single best thing we can do to stop new variants emerging is to reduce the number of coronavirus infections worldwide. This is because each new infection has a chance of creating a new variant that behaves differently."
Vaccines have been free, and sometimes even incentives have been given to urge people to get them. They’ve been shown to be something like 90% effective in keeping one out of the hospital. It’s a roll of the dice how the virus affects people, that’s the thing, you don’t know. If one does not want to get vaccinated, then it’s their choice. Ride it out at home. But the problem arises when able bodied people refuse the vaccine, then get Covid and go running to the hospital. Clogging the hospital, depleting the resources, and blocking people with normal emergencies and illnesses from getting the care they need. Nothing is perfect, but it would make a huge difference if 8 or 9 out of 10 of the Covid patients in the hospital didn’t really have to be there. Even half would be a big relief. Also, the vaccines might have unknowns, but so do a lot of the things the hospital will do to try to keep people alive.When you say you both had it, what symptoms did you both have? Did you need to go to hospital? And if you tested for covid, what else did you test for?
The thing that I've found most puzzling over the past 18 months is that people have been describing what used to be just a bug (cold or flu, undefined). I'm not saying that's trivial, as the flu can be bad news for the compromised and obese, and just a cold can be bad news when you're over 70. The rest of us would miss a couple of days work at most (or zero days for those annoying 'heroes' that go in when they're still ill).
Four or five years ago, before this strange era, a friend (in her 30s and healthier than me) was off work for about a month with a virus. Now it would be front page news.
Since 2021 I've never felt so pressured, actually bullied, to get vaccines that are not only new vaccines, but new types of vaccine, which I took. I have spoken to people that had a bad vaccine experience (more than feeling ill for a few days). We have never tested for a virus this hard before, or tried so hard to attribute one thing as a cause of death (with covid covers a lot of sins).
TLDR. I honestly don't want to make enemies
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Freesia
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The vaccines are clearly not stopping transmission. It's good that they reduce the severity in the vulnerable. And if we're going down the stopping mutations route - there is no end to it, and why not do this for other viruses?*
(*actually please god don't!)
A roll of the dice suggests the odds aren't very good, but if you're healthy they are - most people get it as a mild cold, or don't even know they have it.
Hospitals were clogged here because of the rules, not because the unvaccinated were gagging for breath: staff that test positive can't work, and patients that test positive (regardless of if they're even ill) require extra measures. After omicron was announced, the news didn't seem to care how many people were actually ill. I remember one BBC report lazily saying it was 'about half'.
We have never tested for a virus in this way, and tried so hard to attribute it as a cause of death. What else are we testing for? Why not swab everyone for flu too? I'm sure we could really bump up the stats and cause chaos if we did that.
The vaccines were never billed as a way to completely stop transmission, which was made clear from the get-go. But people didn't want to hear that. They were mainly designed to keep people from getting severely ill/dying so that their numbers wouldn't overwhelm the hospitals. Which is what happened in the early days of the pandemic, at least in my area, before the vaccines. And because it was a new coronavirus, little was known about the long-term impact on the population, hence all the mandates/lockdowns, etc. , to keep it from spreading and keep the hospital systems from collapsing. The flu, at least in recent memory, hasn't overwhelmed hospitals the way COVID did.
And while the COVID vaccine isn't 100% effective against infection, it does offer some protection in that regard, and thus, fewer chances for the virus to survive by mutating. The theory is that if more people had gotten vaccinated when they were eligible (at least in the U.S.), we might have had a better shot at seeing the virus die out and not keep reinventing itself through mutations by jumping to people who weren't vaccinated. Plus, the politics of poorer nations with insufficient access to the vaccines didn't help.
Also, regarding the flu, my understanding is that COVID is more easily spread than the flu is because the incubation period is longer, so there is more opportunity to spread it to more people.
Regarding the news reports, after two-plus years of mitigation measures and other rules, people are tired of it. They don't want to have to do what's really necessary to stop the virus from spreading. There are people now who test positive and don't take the most basic precautions like staying home until you test negative or wearing a mask if you do have to go out. I have a friend who recently got COVID, had symptoms, and still ran her errands the same day she tested positive -- with no mask. That's just selfish, IMHO.
In the beginning of the pandemic, flu season was just about nonexistent because people were staying home, avoiding large gatherings, wearing masks when they did go out, washing their hands and keeping their distance. In my state, the flu was down 95% in the fall of 2020.
The rules did hit the business sector hard, and there was a lot of pressure to lift all the mandates likely before they should have been. But that's easy for me to say. I don't run a restaurant or a gym or a department store or have kids who need to learn in person.
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They were billed as a way of protecting others, if not yourself - I remember one pharmaceutical boss saying ~that on the BBC. However, maybe they do reduce transmission a bit and as I say - it's great we have vaccines to protect the vulnerable. Yes we don't know about the long term impact of people getting a new virus (though maybe some people wouldn't get it at all), but we certainly don't know the long term impact, or unintended consequences, of nearly everyone getting a new type of vaccine passed under emergency conditions.
Who knows. We have never tested for flu like this, nor have we pushed for 'within 28 days of a flu test'. Nor have we segregated staff that are not manifesting sickness AFAIK. I've never seen bizarre news reports of people trying to convince me that young people are in danger, then showing morbidly obese people with long flu, or 'sepsis with flu', as I have with covid.
Zero covid then? Maybe fewer people than you would like to actually want to take the vaccines, but this must surely still be the best/fastest takeup in history?
No idea. Based on what I see, I don't get any sense that we're measuring covid in a manner, or on a scale that we have for any virus before. I take any interpretation of it with a pinch of salt.
It depends how bad you are, but I agree, people going around as normal when they're ill has always annoyed me. That said, I prefer that to the recent madness (as I see it).
Or did flu disappear because we weren't looking for it, and were looking very hard for something else? How many lateral flow tests were done for flu and colds?
I do think it's easy to say. In the UK, I would have preferred earlier lifting, but to be fair I think they did okay. What literally terrifies me is the approach taken by Canada, New Zealand or Australia.
Brian W
Conscientious Christian
This is probably the problem with everything you believe - "I remember one person saying", therefore it must be true!
Freesia
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beancounter
The Fire That Burns Within
Lou
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Lou
Forum Legend
Don't you remember what was happening before the COVID vaccines?
Something like 6 million deaths. and most athorities think that is an underestimation.
In the history of the world, Covid was something like the 5th or 6th worst plague. Oh sure it is dwarfed by things like the Black Plague, but for sure it would have been way worse if not for modern medicine. (and many lives could have saved if there was a better response to it).
Yes I remember. IMO* the system was geared to overcount, but there were clearly a lot of excess covid deaths in the vulnerable.
Interesting link ta. Do you know how the 6.5m covid number was counted? Is it the LFT and '28 days with', or some other way?
The order doesn't mean a lot to me unless it takes world population into account (either way the black death is in a different weight category to the rest). e.g. Spanish flu had 50million deaths with a population of 2billion (2%), and Covid had 6.5million with a population of 7billion (0.1%). And yes covid isn't over, but given that we're testing and counting in a literally unprecedented manner, I wouldn't compare covid stats with anything that's gone before.
*and I feel guilty for having opinions, because I've had this meme sent to me before for doing so, but I'd rather someone just explain why I'm wrong.
