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Is your friend stuck in 2021?
The covid vaccines are three years old now. Millions of people have had 3 or 4 shots, or even more.
In what world are they "new".
Context: I'm fully vaccinated with 4 mRNA shots, I volunteered at a vaccination hub during the first lockdown.
It could be argued that they are still new in that we don't know of any long term affects that might crop up in 20 years time.
Conversely of course any long term affects of a fukll-blown Covid infection that could crop up in 20 years time are likely to be considerably worse.
We're getting Long Covid effects now, but I've yet to hear about Long Vax side effects.
I got long covid from an infection before the vaccines were available.
Getting the vaccination and boosters noticeably worsened my existing long covid symptoms. I still got the boosters because I assume a reinfection would be much worse than the vaccine's effects. If I ever thought I could reasonably avoid risk of future infections I would not choose to get more boosters, but since exposure is inevitable, I'll deal with the consequences of the booster.
When essentially everyone has had exposure to covid your statement can't actually be tested. We don't have a cohort of people we know got vaccinated but were never exposed to the virus.
Anyway, the vaccine is worth getting because the alternative is being exposed to the virus without protection, but that doesn't mean the vaccine is actually free of side effects for everyone.
Hypothetically, it could be because those folks have already died or are experiencing effects that genpop refuses to corroborate with the treatment. There’s been a major bias against reporting side effects (not that the process has ever been fully hashed out) and iirc the ‘cine industry is the only one you can’t sue, so any potentially-educational lawsuits that might’ve been are a nonstarter. Not saying these things are confirmed but that there’s definitely room for a lot to fly under the radar.
Some people have to go on blood thinners due to the covid shot. It’s rare, and most people should get their shot, but there are risks involved.
I work in a pharmacy and I’ve personally filled medications for about 5 people who said they are on blood thinners from getting a covid shot.
Besides that, mrna tech started to be developed in the 1970's with the first labrat trials in the late 80's or early 90's.
Clinical trials on humans, to test their safety and effectiveness in combating various diseases and viruses have been ongoing for the past decade.
And as you said, the first several widely used vaccines based on mrna tech have been deployed to literally billions of people.
This is an incredibly gigantic sample size for data and there have been very few issues for the past 3 years.
And what bernieecclestoned brings up about herd immunity simply means the people they are talking to are, like most antivaxxers, blithering idiots that know some catch phrases and not a single meaning behind them.
You only obtain herd immunity with minimal casualties through hardening the herd with vaccines and then hope the immune systems of the herd adjust to further combat the disease. If data doesn't show that new variants are easily countered by the immune systems of the herd, you know you need to develop more vaccines.
If you try to obtain herd immunity by letting a brand new disease like COVID run its course, you will probably obtain it eventually, but instead of 7 million dead worldwide (and lord knows how many with long covid or other long term disabilities due to the disease), you'll have 70 million or more.
Herd immunity doesn't mean you should just let shit hit the fan and see who's left standing. If you miscalculate the severity of the disease, you can have another situation like with the plague where it killed over 25 million out of the 180 million people on earth.
In todays numbers that would mean like 1.1 billion people die. Probably far more since we're extremely more connected than people were in 400AD.
And you'd think that the better general healthcare and hygiene these days would lessen it, but the sheer increase in how we're connected would easily wipe that advantage off the board.
And the mRNA technology has been in progress for 50 years. That’s why it didn’t take long to create a COVID vaccine
Ok just going to make the counter argument if that's ok?
They are new compared to traditional vaccines like polio and smallpox
Their view is that vaccines are now unnecessary because of herd immunity, (I've got them to concede that hospitals or the economy would have collapsed without vaccines), and that they are just being used up because govts signed contracts.
Their view is that the side effects risk is now higher than the benefit.
So how many years does it take to no longer be new?
The Polio vaccines are also new compared to the Smallpox vaccines.
But that doesn't mean we don't have sufficient data on their safety and effectiveness. And we have comparable levels of data on the mRNA covid vaccines.
So would you say that vaccines are still needed for all, or just for people like me who are immunosuppressed?
It's basically the flu vaccine in my opinion.
People at risk stand to beneffit most, but it doesn't need to be mandated .
Herd immunity only works if the herd is immune. If only a portion of the herd is immune, the rest of the herd will spread disease.
It requires a critical mass to work, and it protects those who can not get the vaccine for medical reasons (like allergic reactions, etc.)
It also only works if the herd remains immune. We are now seeing a return of diseases that had previously been eliminated (not eradicated), due to a decline in vaccinations. Examples include measles and whooping cough.
Vaccines are needed for all, as in everyone who is eligible for inoculation. Yes, if I am vaccinated, my body will be much better equipped to successfully fight off the virus and keep me out of the hospital (and the morgue)...but in doing so, I also contribute to the overall herd immunity, which protects people who have pre-existing conditions, cannot be safely inoculated, or have immune system issues. If I don't get vaccinated, I don't just put myself at risk; if I get covid (which isn't always obvious because it doesn't always present physical symptoms, aka I could be a carrier), I also risk infecting everyone I come in contact with, which endangers people like you.
Anecdotal, I'll admit, but I've had 6 shots now. And I plan on getting one every 6 months because I can't take the risk of getting sick. The only side effects I've suffered is a sore arm for a day or so afterwards. The other side effect is that I haven't gotten Covid yet, or if I did then it was so mild I didn't notice most likely thanks to those vaccines.
Your friends are being short sighted. mRNA vaccines have been around for a long time, almost but not quite as long as polio or small pox vaccines, but still a long time. The only thing that changed for Covid, if you take the time to research the vaccine, is that the message protein was changed. This protein can't hurt you or give you Covid in any way. All it does is present a foreign protein for your immune system to begin fighting. For most people, they don't even notice. Mostly because our immune system is fighting off something actually infectious pretty much every day, but you don't get sick. These vaccines are a valuable tool in fighting infections, specifically because of the way new updates to the vaccines can be created quickly. To deny this is being willfully blind to their benefits.