Re: The Coronavirus Thread - Part 3

[Arquitecto]

So avoiding all the anti-vaxx propaganda and craze that I once followed 8-10 years ago; and with the advice of my friends here I chose Moderna as my vaccination, to which I just got this morning in a mall parking lot in 5 mins, luckily because I know the mall owner from a year ago.

The jab was quick & painless.

No side effects yet an hour later.

Thank you gentlemen.

[Arquitecto]

So I took this vaccine and not with the heavy heart that I would have taken it, if it was me years ago.

But anti-vaxxers do seem to come with some compelling arguments. So bringing out various qualified PHds skeptical of it, from a lot of the good sources speaking of it protecting you from the virus, but as a whole degrading your immune system as a sum.

I wont follow the crockpots about how this is or government or mind control or what not but what really is the alternative perspective and argument against the Vx as this is more a question to put my mind at ease, since my medical experience does not go beyond the more experienced individuals and whom have studied virology, here.

[McLewis]

I think data is needed to determine how many people's immune systems are degraded (permanently, in particular) as a result of receiving a vaccine.

It would not surprise me if that number is very, very low.

[Arquitecto]

From what I understand this happens over a period of 3-5 years.

Since anti-vaxxers basically think they are freedom fighters due to not taking it in (like the ones a bit too against masks) then I hope no evidence will come out as such, as especially given I took the Vx.

[McLewis]

I mean the only reports I know of COVID causing long-term damage was to people who caught it and it seriously messed up their respiratory systems. We call it "Long Covid" here in the US as the infection permanently has damaged their previously healthy (in most cases) respiratory systems. This was prior to the release of the vaccine. I haven't heard of similar impact being seen with the vaccines here in large numbers.

[Babun]

I think data is needed to determine how many people's immune systems are degraded (permanently, in particular) as a result of receiving a vaccine.

It would not surprise me if that number is very, very low.

That's bullcrap. Your immune system will get its training from flu and cold viruses. The degradation woud happen if you vax against everything because immune system needs emergency drills aka fever.
Against Wuhan virus in particular, there's been little to none prior immunity present which led to the pandemic. Vaxing takes care of the prior immunity problem. That said I am not going to take any booster jabs. I'm a healthy individual, I never take flu or other vaccines except for the most important permanent ones I've had as a kid(Hepatitis B, Polio and other stuff).
Again, without prior immunity to a new type of virus, you're playing Russian roulette with your health on the plate.

Also, I met a friend in Italy yesterday whose girlfriend is a nurse in intensive care for newborns in Brescia. She says most of the peeps in the intensive care are unvaxxed. According to her, we're getting an unvaxxed pandemic.

[VivaStPauli]

I mean the only reports I know of COVID causing long-term damage was to people who caught it and it seriously messed up their respiratory systems. We call it "Long Covid" here in the US as the infection permanently has damaged their previously healthy (in most cases) respiratory systems. This was prior to the release of the vaccine. I haven't heard of similar impact being seen with the vaccines here in large numbers.

A lot of people have serious neurological symptoms even after having "mild" cases of Covid over here, even if their respitory system wasn't hit that hard. This seems to be really complicated and unpredictable.

[El Gunner]

what kind of neurological symptoms?

[BarrileteCosmico]

"Also, I met a friend in Italy yesterday whose girlfriend is a nurse in intensive care for newborns in Brescia. She says most of the peeps in the intensive care are unvaxxed. According to her, we're getting an unvaxxed pandemic."

I thought this was well understood? Vaccine is very effective against hospitalizations and deaths.

[VivaStPauli]

what kind of neurological symptoms?

Reports are all over the place.
Memory loss, exhaustion, problems concentrating, blurred vision, disturbed sense of balance.

There's an article that sums up the symptom complexes though it doesn't really delve into how rare or common they are, just what has been observed, but still:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jul/15/long-covid-has-more-than-200-symptoms-study-finds

[El Gunner]

my lungs didn't feel at its full healthy capacity the first time i had a run after covid. But i think it returned to healthy real quick after a few sessions. Otherwise i can't say i have had any "long covid" symptoms.

Had a long run and then a sprint downhill with a young lad the other day... ya know you're getting old when the young blood on the block start out-sprinting you

also just on a sidenote: i can't seem to run too fast for too long anymore without getting a headache and dizziness these days. This however has happened to me pre-covid as well in the last few years. Think it might be a side effect of my drowning incident some years back or maybe of a few concussions during my basketball playing years.

[Vibe]

"Also, I met a friend in Italy yesterday whose girlfriend is a nurse in intensive care for newborns in Brescia. She says most of the peeps in the intensive care are unvaxxed. According to her, we're getting an unvaxxed pandemic."

I thought this was well understood? Vaccine is very effective against hospitalizations and deaths.

We get a shitload of vaccinated patients.

Mostly the Sinopharm vaccine though. We've had a couple of Sputnik cases and very few Phizer ones, but those were generally people who barely got their first dose.

Don't know about other vaccines, as those 3 are present around here. Think we only recently got Moderna or AstraZeneca,but not sure about that.

Even though this pandemic became just another day in the office for me, there was a guy a couple days ago whose case really breaks me apart. He was born in 1993, a very young and really decent guy, and watching him struggle to inhale haunts me all the time. We eventually sent him to the capital as there was nothing more we could do for him, so I don't know what happened to him but his oxygen sat was 63% at that point, so... I can only hope he somehow made it.

He lives in France and came to visit on holidays. He only received his first dose of Phizer... His parents couldn't go in to see him.

[El Gunner]

^^interesting because Sinopharm has been the most popular/used vaccine in Namibia so far

[Vibe]

Haven't read this thread in a while, and I see the vaccine discussions so I will try to chip in with some first hand experience.

Whether you should get vaccinated or not, I get this question a lot, and I always have the same answer - you need to decide for yourself.

I personally got the Pfizer one a while ago. Why Pfizer? Because there were literally no cases at all with patients vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine. Sputnik neither, but in general, as someone who works in the profession, Phizer drugs are usually high quality and this is the logic used in getting it. We've had a lot of Sinopharm patients, but this does not make the vaccine bad, it is clearly less effective but it also seems the safest to me, as it is a vaccine made with traditional vaccine methods, usually comes with no side-effects and generally younger people decide for it, females mostly if they have't given birth yet. Also people who don't really want to get vaccinated but do so for other reasons, so they go for the least aggressive option.

Vaccines in general are GOOD. Saved countless lives and vaccination is a great thing.

The problem here is that it takes time to know the long term effects of any drug, and obviously we haven't had that time, so all of this is still an experimental phase. Things might happen later that we couldn't imagine would happen, maybe nothing will happen. We just don't know.

The other danger here is the Pharmaceutical mafia. Obviously they only care about profits and the general well being of humanity is a secondary concern, no one should have any doubts about this. If you do, remember how many people died in Africa because it wasn't profitable to sell glass syringes that could be sterilized, so they sold plastic ones that were cheap to make and you have to buy again and again, however they couldn't always buy new ones so they reused them and millions got HIV and HCV.

Another question mark is the effectiveness of the vaccine against mutated variants of the virus.

Despite having a lot of cases with people that have been vaccinated, I believe that the number of cases with unvaccinated people is still far greater.  I personally support vaccination. It is all I have to say.

My experiences are also local. I never read about covid online, I don't follow the numbers on TV, everything I've said was my own experience.

At the beginning the vaccination was a lottery, not as much now, we know a lot more, but still a lottery to an extent.

[BarcaLearning]

Thx Vibe for the details of your local experiences with the vax, always good to know more.

[McLewis]

I think data is needed to determine how many people's immune systems are degraded (permanently, in particular) as a result of receiving a vaccine.

It would not surprise me if that number is very, very low.

That's bullcrap. Your immune system will get its training from flu and cold viruses. The degradation woud happen if you vax against everything because immune system needs emergency drills aka fever.
Against Wuhan virus in particular, there's been little to none prior immunity present which led to the pandemic. Vaxing takes care of the prior immunity problem. That said I am not going to take any booster jabs. I'm a healthy individual, I never take flu or other vaccines except for the most important permanent ones I've had as a kid(Hepatitis B, Polio and other stuff).
Again, without prior immunity to a new type of virus, you're playing Russian roulette with your health on the plate.

Also, I met a friend in Italy yesterday whose girlfriend is a nurse in intensive care for newborns in Brescia. She says most of the peeps in the intensive care are unvaxxed. According to her, we're getting an unvaxxed pandemic.

I don't disagree. I'm fully vaxxed myself. What I was speaking to is a problem among the unvaccinated who catch the virus here in the States. This issue first popped up long before the vaccine was developed. There was s tory after story of perfectly healthy people catching COVID, having to go on a respiratory and, to this day, still having to deal with the lingering effects of the damage the virus inflicted on their respiratory system.

I don't disagree with you, however I'm also not going to dismiss the plight of those folks out of hand.

[CBarca]

With my girlfriend's parents this weekend and got sick, dunno if it's COVID or not. Don't really have the classic COVID symptoms (loss of taste/smell, cough, I have only a slight fever), but I'm hoping not. Been absolutely knocked on my ass. Four hours from home too, this sucks. Heading home tomorrow and then off to get a test

[sportsczy]

Risk/reward for those hesitating.

What do you risk in terms of complications if you take the vaccine and you happen to be in the very small % of people who get a bad side effect? On the other hand, what are your odds of getting COVID and having serious complications?

No brainer imo.

That said, I'm all about natural selection at this point. So fine... don't vax. But keep in mind that you're not just making the decision for yourself; you're endangering everyone else as well.

You can be damned sure that the politicians would not be vaccinated if there was any serious risk.

[BarrileteCosmico]

My experience with those hesitating is that they put a lot of focus on the downside but barely any thought on the upside. A lot of the "side effects" are far more likely to occur with Covid itself, but that often is lost on them for some reason.

[MindYourThinking]

[Myesyats]

https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/news/moderna-hiv-vaccine/

Moderna set to start human trials of experimental mRNA HIV vaccine

“Even as we have shown that our mRNA-based vaccine can prevent Covid-19, this has encouraged us to pursue more-ambitious development programs within our prophylactic vaccines modality. Today we are announcing three new vaccine programs addressing seasonal flu, HIV and the Nipah virus, some of which have eluded traditional vaccine efforts, and all of which we believe can be addressed with our mRNA technology.”

mRNA ftw

[El Gunner]

“Even as we have shown that our mRNA-based vaccine can prevent Covid-19

why are they lying?

[VivaStPauli]

“Even as we have shown that our mRNA-based vaccine can prevent Covid-19

why are they lying?

It did prevent the wyld type, and does prevent deaths from the variant. It is admittedly imprecise, but hardly a lie.

[El Gunner]

uhmmm, it is a factual grammatical lie if they are going for that phrasing

[BarrileteCosmico]

I mean, the vaccine they designed was for alpha, and it works for alpha. If new variants pop up that dramatically change the spike protein, is that really the vaccine's fault? It's not what it was designed for.

[VivaStPauli]

I mean, the vaccine they designed was for alpha, and it works for alpha. If new variants pop up that dramatically change the spike protein, is that really the vaccine's fault? It's not what it was designed for.

That's my point. It's proven to work. Obviously a fast-replicating virus like Covid will provide more challenges. But it's not like the vaccine doesn't work against the virus it was developed to work against.

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