https://loudwire.com/dee-snider-covid-positive-test/
I’m vaccinated. I don’t see any reason I should get tested. I’m not around many people, wear a mask in public places, and I’ve not been exposed to anyone who has tested positive.
@quixotic_life usually sinus drainage, headache, chest congestion, cough. A large number of positive covid patients do not ever run a fever.
@cuddleanurse ~ Huh (somewhat, a bit, yes, no, no, and...)...
'My friend' is vaccinated but happened to buy a new mouthwash the same day their partner was getting their first round of the vaccine (they went to the clinic together). The next day, and for five days following that single use of the mouthwash, 'my friend' was experiencing a weird taste with everything they ate and, of all the liquids they tried to get down, water was the absolute worst!
It wasn't until this thread I thought, "Oh crap! That could have been Covid!!" Not sure if it would show up on a test now, it's been a week since, and not sure if it matters since 'my friend' is still masking and maintaining social distancing practices. But still...
Anyway, have you (the collective you/any of y'all) heard anything along the lines of boosters for those who were vaccinated almost six months ago??
@cuddleanurse now I’m wondering if I had it a couple weeks ago… serious runny nose, constant coughing from chest , serious tearing up, nothing tasted good and exhaustion for about 3 days. On 3rd day after feeling better got a negative rapid covid test
In Hawai'i, a fully vaccinated 80 yo man died the weeks ago.
https://www.khon2.com/coronavirus/hawaii-reports-first-fully-vaccinated-coronavirus-death/
@davebutton not afraid, hadn't been on here yet, lol. But I'm not anti-vax in the least. I just understand how people all have different levels of comfort for something still new. I wholly support people doing whatever makes them feel more comfortable. But I'm a libertarian. 😇
@SoftCuddleBug95 I'll happily answer your question. At first I was waiting. Simply wanted more information and more data. Then I knew someone directly who went into anaphylaxis after getting the shot. She was hospitalized for three days and subsequently had months of recuperation, physical therapy, and inability to return to work because of the lasting effects. Obviously this is VERY rare. I do not advocate massive fear around the vaccine, everyone else I know who has gotten it has been mostly fine, but being so close to such a terrible response, with no explanation as to what caused it (and thus to be able to predict personal risk for it), it's scary. My doctor even agreed with me that it's concerning and said no one should go in for voluntary preventative medicine and end up in the hospital because of that choice (and he does support getting vaccine in his practice). I'm not anti-vax, I am just not very comfortable with any option right now. But I have VERY little exposure to people right now and always mask in public locations... I know the choice seems so easy to many of you, but it's not so clear for a lot of people. 😔
@ubergigglefritz that's a terrible story, pretty devasting for all concerned. Your doctor is right, it is concerning. Nonetheless, I worry for you. Covid is much more dangerous than any vaccine.
@quixotic_life I believe some countries are starting to do boosters. The UK is looking at it very seriously. It's a very difficult question because you have to think about things like vaccine production - it will be a long way into 2022 (at least) before we've even made enough vaccines for everybody.
@Babichev it's all a question of risk. Nothing is 100% effective. Sounds like there is no reason for you to get a test right now, but there might be tomorrow or next week or next month.
@AlohaGirl vaccines give up to 95% protection against serious illness and death. No vaccine, for any disease, gives complete protection. What we're hoping for is that all the people we lose have been double vaccinated. (I.e. 100% of the population vaccinated.)
@CuddleDuncan "Covid is much more dangerous than any vaccine."
Tell that to the people who have been devastated by it or the VERY few who have died. I make no claims that the vaccine is very dangerous and that people shouldn't take it, but same as you shouldn't make claims that covid is worse. It is most likely certainly not worse for some people. We can only make conjectures about who are having these adverse reactions to them and why. My friend was young and healthy. No explanation as to why this happened. I always get the flu shot, have gotten all my other vaccines, but have also always been fairly minimalistic with taking other drugs. My libertarian opinion remains - this vaccine is still in the stage where I wholly understand the people who are not ready to take it yet; but the pandemic situation has also been such that I wholly understand people who were ready to be first in line. We are all individuals with all very unique situations and risk assessments and risk tolerance levels. The result is that we will all make different decisions with uniquely different reasons for our decisions. 👍
@ubergigglefritz I'm really, really sorry about your friend. It's a terrible thing. It's obviously had a huge effect on you. Big hugs for you. 🤗🤗🤗
Don't read what's below unless you're in the right mood, it's potentially upsetting. I'm struggling to get the tone right because I'm twice upset, once by what happened and once by you (and others) not being as safe as I'd like you to be.
Tell that to the people who have been devastated by it [the vaccine]
Sure. It would be a very diffcult conversation, but it if needs to be had there is no upside in not having it.
you shouldn't make claims that covid is worse.
I'm not claiming it, it's a statement of verifiable fact. It's not a matter of opinion. Secondly, yes I should. Everybody should. There is no advantage to anybody in denying or ignoring reality.
this vaccine is still in the stage where I wholly understand the people who are not ready to take it yet
I don't - please explain. Over 4 billion doses of vaccine have been delivered, the first of them over a year ago. What are these people waiting for? Bearing in mind that every day they wait, more people die.
Covid has killed over 4,000,000 people that we know of. 8,000,000 is a more likely number. It will kill a couple of million more.
Vaccines have killed a handful of people..... probably, we're not even that sure.
Covid is MUCH more dangerous than any of the covid vaccines. You are MUCH more likely to die or become seriously ill from covid than you are from vaccination.
I'll put in another way. Assume (to keep the sums easy) that 400 people have died from vaccine. 4 million divided by 400 = 10,000) Now imagine a revolver, not with the usual six cylinders, but with 10,000. For complicated reasons, you are obliged to point the revolver at your head, spin the cylinder, and fire.
However, you get a choice as to ammunition load. You can either have one bullet and 9,999 empty chambers (option A), or one empty chamber and 9,999 bullets (option . Option A represents taking the vaccine, option B represents covid. It's a very imperfect analogy but I'm trying to communicate the actual balance of risk.
Which option to do you choose?
Now, the person who went before you chose option A, they got the vaccine. But they were very unlucky, they hit the chamber with the bullet. Bearing in mind that the pistol is cleaned and reloaded between each person, does what happened to them change your decision?
LIST OF THINGS MORE DANGEROUS THAN COVID VACCINE
Chairs .. kill 300 people a year in the US alone Beds ..... 1,000 from falls plus another 1,000 from suffocation and strangulation Baths ... 600 Eating ... 1,600 from obstruction of the oesophagus alone, never mind the other ways
In other words, if you are willing to sleep in a bed, but not willing to take a covid vaccine, you are arguably being inconsistent in your appreciation of risk: willing to do the dangerous thing but not willing to do the safe thing.
It's been a difficult 18 months for nearly everybody. I've been lucky, I've not lost anybody close. I want to stay lucky. I worry about people I know and care about - even just forum acquaintainces - because every day you don't get the vaccine is a day when you put yourselves are risk. It's a day when you put everybody else at risk. When I got the text that my vaccine slot was open, I went as soon as I could: I could not have lived with the guilt of delaying even one day. Everybody is different, and some people time to come to terms with the whole question. Big emotional events close to home can make that process much harder. But they don't change the answer.
@CuddleDuncan "please explain." Because I am a compassionate person who understands that everyone has a different story, a different brain, different factors going into a decision, etc. It's why I'm driven to my work, and frankly why I'm so good at it. 😆😇 Everyone is an Individual and I have the capacity to understand their individual self. I also understand why this is so inflaming and upsetting to you. I do.
In response to your comments, I think where we differentiate is that you are talking about universal population risk and I am talking about individual risk. For one individual it could very well be the case that the vaccine is worse. You can't know that's not true. For another individual covid is absolutely worse. The problem is that we do not know who is at greater risk with the vaccine, so it can be harder for some people with statistically reduced covid risk to make that risk assessment. The further problem is that those people, if they took the vaccine, are voluntarily taking on that unknown risk. So the risk comparison is not the flat covid complication/death rate versus the flat vaccine complication/death rate. It's (risk of being exposed to covid) x (risk of contracting covid) x (risk of complication/death from covid) versus (risk of exposure to vaccine, a flat 0 or 1) x (risk of complication/death from vaccine). I graduated cum laude with a math degree. It's not just A vs B. 😇 Does that help with sharing compassion at all?
The rest of your arguments all have fallacies, but I'm typing on my phone and feel like anything I say would be falling on deaf ears anyway. Though I'm happy to explain from my computer if interested. But in the end, I understand where you're coming from and I understand your fears and concerns and having the opinion that your opinion is the only truth. I also understand where others are coming from and personally have the opinion that we can't know the absolute truth yet as that only comes in the future. 😇
I just want to mention smoking, radioactive materials, and early monitors. These are all things that started out fine but years later people figured out that they're not. It's not some unfounded thing to be cautious of new things.
I mention this because I don't like such black and white thinking on any end.
@CuddleDuncan - please explain how by not getting the Covid vaccine "you put everybody else at risk"?
@ubergigglefritz I like how you’re able to defend your position while being empathetic to the other side of the argument & not being confrontational about it at all … it made me gravitate towards you & I clicked on your profile & you have one of the best ‘about me’ ive read on here … I’m actually learning from you 🌌
@MayFlowers how is your baby doing?
@cuddles_ndream Thanks. ☺️ I'm not perfect, but I really try. I think it's important to remember that we all have different perspectives and different experiences that mold which ours are. I truly believe that most all people are inherently good and that we're all doing the very best we can with what we've got. I don't think people are bad or evil just because they have a different opinion than I do, and I acknowledge that my truth is not necessarily everyone else's truth... 🤷♀️ My biggest fear right now is our society continuing to lose our ability to communicate with people who feel different than ourselves, and the easiest way to continue down that path is to judge, bully, and hate, so I do what I can to help counter that. I appreciate feeling seen. Thanks. 🤗
@ubergigglefritz i love your energy, & you’re very intelligent.. If you’re ever in nyc plz let me know ☺️
This is a good article:
5 Things To Know About the Delta Variant https://ym.care/5dy
Everything I’m hearing about the Delta variant is not good. I read an article earlier today that about 350 people in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, got COVID-19 and 80% of them were vaccinated, though not all of them were symptomatic. This was an alarming incident and is one of the things that led to a reinstatement of mask recommendations by the CDC.
https://www.livescience.com/cape-cod-covid-19-outbreak-delta-variant.html
More evidence that vaccine disinformation is being driven by Russia. Perhaps we should stop using the term 'anti-vaxxers' and starting saying 'Putin's puppets'. 🙄 😁
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-58167339
@UKGuy there are two different reasons. Firstly, vaccines reduce transmission rates by typically around 50% given infection. In other words, an infected unvaccinated person is twice as likely to infect others as a vaccinated person is. Or to put it another way, an unvaccinated person is twice as likely to kill somebody.
Secondly, an unvaccinated person makes a much better virus host than an unvaccinated one. Every time this happens it gives the virus an opportunity to mutate into something really nasty. This is particularly problematic since covid-19 is so often asymptomatic: unvaccinated people are much more likely catch it, act as a mutation vessel and then pass it on without knowing about it.
Every unvaccinated person is a risk to everybody. Hence the statement, no one is safe until everyone is safe.
@JasonCuddles, I'm not sure what you mean by "early monitors" but smoking and radioactivity did not start out fine. The Elizabethans were perfectly well aware that smoking was bad for you because it's blindingly obvious. It was abundantly clear that radioactivity was dangerous within a very few years of its discovery, and the early signs were recognised within months.
Vaccination was discovered in 1796 and was in widespread use within a few decades. It's older than the steam railway. Being nervous of vaccination because it is 'new' is like being nervous of going on a train because it is 'new'. Over 4,500,000,000 doses of vaccine have been administered now. That compares with a bit over 1 billion cars produced ever.
You are right that it is reasonable - indeed, sensible - to be cautious about new things. But covid vaccines are not even slightly new. Sure, they haven't been around for a great length of time, but that's not the same thing.
@ubergigglefritz
and frankly why I'm so good at [my work]
Actually, I've always suspected you are amazing at it. Yours was one of the first profiles I read and I was very impressed: in fact you are one of the reasons I joined this site properly.
It is certainly true that I am focussing more on general risk and you more on individual risk. And it is obviously true that everybody's risk profile is different. I liked the maths, but as you know the tricky bit about maths (especially applied maths) is not so much solving the equation as figuring out what it is. How do you capture the risk to others or society at large in such an equation?
I do understand where some people are coming from. One friend was very reluctant to get the vaccine because the last time she had a vaccine, as a child, she had an adverse reaction and nearly died. She began to shake slightly as she was taking about it, so I just hugged her and gave her lots of reassurance. (She is now vaccinated.)
Another friend I saw the other day is reluctant because she thought the vaccines are 'experimental'. Well, that was true a year ago but it's not true now. It was only last week but she looked very thoughtful after our conversation.
What I don't understand is people who quote reasons which are gibberish. Obviously I normally wouldn't care but this is a matter of life and death: it's not ok to be putting us all at risk unless you have a reason for it. If you do have a sound reason, hooray, that's an end to it.
All of which leaves me with the people like you, who are not quoting gibberish but who I still don't fully understand. So yes, please explain (by PM if you prefer). Whenever I say things like 'please explain' I really mean it.
mRNA vaccinations are much newer. By early monitors I mean like computer displays. They were giving people cancer in the early days. With smoking and radioactivity you're not exactly correct, radioactive stuff was being sold for a couple decades if I recall correctly. Also smoking was fudged with many doctors recommending it back in the day and many scientific papers saying it was fine. There are plenty more examples of people doing things which were harming them that wasn't figured out until much later. It's common in human history.
mRNA vaccines are indeed much newer. If that concerns you, get one of the other types.
There are of course things which were thought to be fine and turned out not to be. But smoking is a poor example in this sense: a vaccine is analagous to one cigarette, not many a day for decades. CRTs similarly, you don't get cancer from looking at one once for twenty minutes.
Can anybody give us a clear example of a thing from history which happens to you once or twice, was unequivocally fine at the time, and turns out years later to be catastrophic in large number of cases?
@CuddleDuncan
I’m going to guess you mean, besides birth?
😉
mRNA vaccinations are much newer.
The Delta variant is new too and it has a lot of relatives just waiting to be born that will be deadlier the longer large swaths of people go unvaccinated. Side effects from vaccines of any kind are noticed in the first six weeks, the side effects of the Delta variant can be long term or you might notice the side effects once your dead and waiting for rebirth depending what beliefs you have.
Just saying.
@CuddleDuncan - I can think of one example of something from history which was given to people in certain incremental amounts by medical professionals, was considered fine at first, and then became a nationwide epidemic. —> And that is Opioids, specifically:
Oxycodone (commonly sold under the trade names OxyContin and Percocet), Hydrocodone (Vicodin, Norco), And Fentanyl, which is synthesized to resemble other opiates such as opium-derived morphine and heroin.
Oxycodone (commonly sold under the trade names OxyContin and Percocet),
Hydrocodone (Vicodin, Norco),
And Fentanyl, which is synthesized to resemble other opiates such as opium-derived morphine and heroin.
What the U.S. Surgeon General dubbed "The Opioid Crisis" was theorized to have been caused by the over-prescription of opioids in the 1990s, which led to the controversial CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain, 2016;
The resulting impact on medical access to prescription opioids for both persons suffering from chronic, degenerative, and terminal conditions with pain, and those struggling with opioid use disorders (OUD), a sub-category of substance use disorder (SUD).
Opioids initiated for post-surgical pain management have long been debated as one of the causative factors in the opioid crisis, with misuse/abuse estimated at approximately 4.3% of people continuing opioid use after trauma or surgery.
Between 1991 and 2011, painkiller prescriptions in the U.S. tripled from 76 million to 219 million per year, and as of 2016 more than 289 million prescriptions were written for opioid drugs per year.
By 2002, one in six drug users were being prescribed drugs more powerful than morphine; by 2012, the ratio had doubled to one in three.
The most commonly prescribed opioids have been oxycodone and hydrocodone.
The epidemic has been described as a "uniquely American problem". The structure of the US healthcare system, in which people not qualifying for government programs are required to obtain private insurance, favors prescribing drugs over more expensive therapies.
According to Professor Judith Feinberg, "Most insurance, especially for poor people, won't pay for anything but a pill."
Prescription rates for opioids in the US are 40 percent higher than the rate in other developed countries such as Germany or Canada.
While the rates of opioid prescriptions increased between 2001 and 2010, the prescription of non-opioid pain relievers (aspirin, ibuprofen, etc.) decreased from 38% to 29% of ambulatory visits in the same time period, and there has been no change in the amount of pain reported in the U.S.
This has led to differing medical opinions, with some noting that there is little evidence that opioids are effective for chronic pain not caused by cancer.
https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/opioids/opioid-overdose-crisis
@NicoSnuggs Opioids are an addictive drug, whereas vaccines are not addictive. I understand the point you are making but the opioid epidemic is not a scientific failure—it is a systemic failure by the healthcare field, pharma, the FDA and the public themselves. Fact of the matter is it is an addictive substance and the demand will now be fed by cartels and triads. Cocaine was once a medicine too, but none of these are a vaccine.
It isn’t nice, and I wish I had any actual power over it, but the bottom line is always natural selection.
Trusting to random luck is all well and good I suppose, but when my family and I are betting our lives I’ll take luck AND science together, please.
Amazing examples @NicoSnuggs with references to back up your claim … there have also been several prescriptions for arthritis & other ailments that turned out very bad for the general public that led to wide spread recalls / lawsuits which were Fully FDA approved.
I am very disappointed in how so many people in this country (usa) have purposefully avoided getting the vaccine. The result is that we have so many states that have insanely high positivity rates. While most of these people are unvaccinated, the problem with having the delta variant running rampant is that the more people who are sick with it the greater chance another variant will emerge that is even worse and may even evade our vaccine. That would then make the rest of us who got the vaccine susceptible all over again to the virus. Yes there are rare side effects to the vaccine. But that is extremely rare. Its much more likely you will end up getting the delta variant if you aren't vaccinated because it is extremely contagious and its been shown that even vaccinated people can spread it. Someone commented that a close friend had a terrible reaction to the vaccine. That's terrible but you need to use logic here and look at the actual numbers. You're using the same logic people used for not wearing seat belts. they would talk about that unusual and rare case that someone is in a car accident and the car is on fire and they couldn't get out of their car fast enough because of the seat belt. They ignored the fact that overwhelmingly seat belts save lives and have continued to save lives since they became popular and then required by law. But of course you'll have that one person who knows a friend who survived because they didn't wear a seat belt, and then they themselves won't wear one. Never mind that statistically speaking they would be safer if they wore one. People don't listen to rational logic, they allow emotion and personal experience to override the numbers and what is happening outside of their small world view of just one sample size data.
Great points @cuddles_ndream