Thanks for your post, I thought it was a very good summary of our situation.
...my impression has been that both sides of the issue can be wrong. On the one hand, there are respected and seemingly good experts like like Dr. Faucci who are suggesting to get the vaccine. Although it seems that it hasn’t had a strong history of testing, it seems also to be a question of risk vs reward.
I think this is exactly correct. The initial COVID science at the start of the pandemic was off, it indicated that the virus wasn't airborne, when in fact it is, and that surface transmission is unimportant. However, scientific investigations are published, reviewed and corrected.
For example, the fact that the virus is mutating so fast and creating new strains that are getting more virulent, and the fact that the mutations happen because people aren’t imune to the virus and are catching and spreading it, makes it a very risky situation in that what will it mutate to next if we don’t defeat it. So in this case, aren’t some of the anti-vaccine people effectively causing these mutations if they’re anti vaccine and anti mask?
This is also my (layman's) understanding, and you can associate the major variants with places with uncontrolled virus circulation. It's hardly a coincidence that there's no Argentinian variant, whereas there are Andean (Peru and Chile), Manaus, Kent, and Indian variants, to use the old (politically incorrect, but still useful in connecting the dots) nomenclature, all places where the virus raged out of control over a longer period of time.
But I agree that it seems these vaccines don’t have a long history to know better their long term effect. Some people might worry that they might have a higher likelihood to catch some disease or cancer from it. At the same time, it’s possible to have a higher chance of catching certain cancers I believe from some viruses themselves, so there are two sides to that argument, though again, no expert here, so please correct me if I misunderstand.
We have no history to go on, this pandemic has forced the very rapid development and release of vaccines, some of which use relatively new technologies (mRNA, protein-based). I don't dispute this, but I think that it was a race against time, and we're a lot better off than if the virus had been let rip.
The product data of the approved vaccines is published, as are the safety data. It's really quite surprising that a poster here would actually quote the link and the partial data for a vaccine, and at the same time stupidly claim that this data was somehow being hidden. It's a modern day confirmation that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
On the one hand I have a hard time with the idea of forcing people to take vaccine. It’s not a good idea for the government to get involved too much in people’s lives, because sometimes the government actually doesn't know what it’s doing, so personal freedoms are great in that sense, though the side effect is that people won’t be protected as much from their own mistakes, and from the mistakes of others in some cases if the government doesn’t get involved. There may be a balancing here that must be done.
I hear you, though I have considerably more understanding for people who can't take vaccines for medical reasons. Hiding in the immunized herd doesn't get much sympathy from me. But in any case, nobody is yet talking (afaik) about forced vaccination, rather the talk is about what can you do if you're not vaccinated. Personally, unvaccinated people are not very welcome in my vicinity, home, office, or wherever.
However, having said that, I also have a hard time accepting the idea that one can not be vaccinated or immuned otherwise, and be allowed to go indoors without a mask, because then isn’t that person spewing something out of their body that’s known to be very harmful and putting it on others? We’re not taking about the common cold here, but a very dangerous and relatively uncommon virus, and even with the common cold there are recommendations or expectations such as don’t come to work if you’re sick. At that point that person’s personal freedom may be interfering with the rights of others to not have a know deadly virus spewed on them.
Exactly, yes. Almost all of the measures taken against the virus have been to prevent infected people from spreading the virus.
For me, the only question is which vaccine to try to get for a 3rd / booster dose. It doesn't matter that I had the 2nd dose in September. I've had 3-dose vaccines before, this isn't new. But COVID sure as hell is.