COVID-19 vaccines: medical concerns and recommendations

[farscott]

I have been trying to keep up with the published research, and everything I have read, as a whole, suggests the vaccines are very effective. The flip side is the large pool of unvaccinated people mean the probability of mutations/variants against which the vaccines may not be as effective is higher and that we will be dealing with new variants for some time. As such, I suspect we will see annual inoculations for COVID variants, much like the flu shot.

But there is some data that is confusing. The delta variant is supposed to be very contagious. As such, we would expect high infection rates until we see a change in behavior. But that is not the case. Places with high incidents of the delta variant suddenly stop having new cases, and I cannot see any correlation between human behavior and the drop in infection rates. That suggests our understanding is not complete.

[Borderland]

I have as a result of this post - it's been so rare here that so far I've felt pretty comfortable just waiting to see how things shake out.

Just based on this I'm guessing that situation won't last and exposure will be much more likely.

I've never thought the vaccines were likely to pose much risk but with a case rate here of 500/100,000 I just haven't been concerned about getting it in the first place, so even a minimal risk from the vaccine, I could afford to skip.

But if the variant is that much more aggressive, then I don't think I can play the wait and see game nearly as safely, so I'd rather be vaccinated.

Yep, it's high stakes game you don't need to play.

People buy lottery tickets with far greater odds of losing.

[Joe in PNG]

From what I'm reading, and seeing IRL, the good of the vaccine far outweighs the bad. Any potential bad effects from the vaccine are far, far, far less bad than the bad effects from getting the virus.

As JAD said upthread, "Thing I love about the vaccine is that it turns covid into a first world problem." Disarming the body's potential tendency to freak out & overreact at catching a totally new virus and putting you into ARDS, or turning what could have been weeks in the ICU into a few days of something like a medium cold- that's all worth it.

[MickAK]

The flip side is the large pool of unvaccinated people

I am tired of seeing this. There was nothing in the trial data that suggested that the various vaccines would provide sterilizing immunity and stamp out the virus.

The vaccines are not working as good as people hoped. They're still saving a lot of lives. There's something really fucked up about blaming people that chose not to participate in a medical experiment for that medical experiments failures without any supporting data, and it's really disturbing to continually read that here.

[Kanye Wyoming]

[MickAK]

[luckyman]

Nah, I doubt that I’m missing much. The graphic is not misleading, unprofessional, or inaccurate. It very effectively illustrates a reality that doesn’t comport with the anti-vax, conspiracy theory mindset that some people have. That mindset doesn’t seem to tolerate anything that suggests the vaccines are effective, and will invent fake criticisms of data (it’s presented the wrong way, it doesn’t include X, the slide’s background is missing rainbows, etc.) in order to avert attention from reality.

Anyway, carry on. My ignore list grows.

Nah, I doubt that I’m missing much. The graphic is not misleading, unprofessional, or inaccurate. It very effectively illustrates a reality that doesn’t comport with the anti-vax, conspiracy theory mindset that some people have. That mindset doesn’t seem to tolerate anything that suggests the vaccines are effective, and will invent fake criticisms of data (it’s presented the wrong way, it doesn’t include X, the slide’s background is missing rainbows, etc.) in order to avert attention from reality.

Anyway, carry on. My ignore list grows.

Nah, I doubt that I’m missing much. The graphic is not misleading, unprofessional, or inaccurate. It very effectively illustrates a reality that doesn’t comport with the anti-vax, conspiracy theory mindset that some people have. That mindset doesn’t seem to tolerate anything that suggests the vaccines are effective, and will invent fake criticisms of data (it’s presented the wrong way, it doesn’t include X, the slide’s background is missing rainbows, etc.) in order to avert attention from reality.

Anyway, carry on. My ignore list grows.

Nah, I doubt that I’m missing much. The graphic is not misleading, unprofessional, or inaccurate. It very effectively illustrates a reality that doesn’t comport with the anti-vax, conspiracy theory mindset that some people have. That mindset doesn’t seem to tolerate anything that suggests the vaccines are effective, and will invent fake criticisms of data (it’s presented the wrong way, it doesn’t include X, the slide’s background is missing rainbows, etc.) in order to avert attention from reality.

Anyway, carry on. My ignore list grows.

Eh, this is probably a lost cause, but keep in mind I’ve been vaccinated myself and am a huge proponent of vaccines.

You’re absolutely correct that looking up the population of Va and some simple math would fill in the main missing data, ignoring some of the formatting / data arrangement issues that you would certainly find trivial. I’ll point out there seems to be a small data inconsistency on the chart, as it has 12784 unvaccinated cases plus 303 fully vaccinated cases but at the bottom says 13133 total cases where I was expecting 13087. But in any case if they would have shown a Covid Infection rate of ~.32% for un-fully-vaccinated people to compare to the .007% for vaccinated people, that and similar math in the second cell of the row would have addressed the main shortcoming.

I care about the population getting mostly all vaccinated, and hate to see anything go out that doesn’t do as well as it could in furthering that goal; I know way to many people who are math-shy and not analytical, to the point where I do want to spoon feed them when I can. And yes I realize some of those same people will see the .32% number and say “well that’s not much, I probably won’t get sick anyway” and use that as an excuse to skip the vaccine.

Edited to add: and I sure hope one of the primary target audiences of this chart is the group of people who are vaccine hesitant.

I was frankly semi-mindlessly ranting amongst an audience that I thought would understand I was coming from a viewpoint of wanting to best convince people who are vaccine hesitant.
But if your point was “we shouldn’t show that .32% number, people are too dumb to put it in context”, then we do fundamentally disagree.

Anyway, I will shut up now so we can get back to the more important conversations.

[Kanye Wyoming]

Well played.

[pangloss]

That suggests our understanding is not complete.

Amen to that!



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[Borderland]

We're all spreaders now. Vaccinated or not. I get a short term flu like illness and the unvaccinated gets a stay in the ICU.

Good luck with that amigos. I hope everyone has insurance because if you don't I'm paying for it. You're welcome. Ain't America great?