PHILIPE
Veteran Member
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What if herd immunity can't be reached with a vaccine, as too many refuse to have it?
- Thread starter Bletchleyite
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Most of Wales new figures are confined to the Wrexham area in the Betsi Cadwallader Health Board area
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Quite. Look at Gulf War syndrome and how the Govt shafted so many people who did take jabs in a very similar emergency/risk/semi-experimental drugs context.
I wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole. All the ingredients for a disaster - extremely rushed, vast profits to who nominally gets there first, insanely politicised, still absent a lot of knowledge on Covid19etc.
It seems a very high risk (outcome x chance) to put that into your body.
And anyone wanting mandatory or punitive measures can do one. Make a facist dictatorship of your own to live in. Masked, noddy suited and in air bubbles at home if you want.
The response to that is John Gummer. Remember he of BSE burger fame...
Anyone who uses their children in such a manner is by definition, unfit to hold any position of power or influence at all.
That the children “consented” just adds insult to injury, I have kids and can get them to consent to anything with the right prep and use of words,treats,threats etc. as can any half intelligent parent.
The fact someone has done this is enough for me to walk away from their offer for ever.
Noone should ever be so confident of their position that they use their children to advance it. It is a sign of irrational and incoherant blindness to their own fallibility if nothing else.
My argument, is that quite frankly the high risk is more than outweighed by the potential vast reward. I think there are several good signs too - the various groups developing a vaccine are all taking different approaches. So it seems unlikely that even if some are malicious or negligent, all the different groups are. And while profits will be a motivating factor, a bigger one will be acclaim. The chances are, the scientists who produce the best vaccine will win Nobel prizes and will become internationally renowned. A scientist who produces a botched vaccine will quite possibly never work again, and will be deeply disgraced. As far as I'm concerned that's a pretty strong motivation for these groups to get it right.
As to mandatory vaccines, personally I think that should be a last resort. But is it really any more dystopian than the current situation? This masked, socially distanced dystopia which is increasingly emerging? If we find a good vaccine, that means no more masks, no more distancing, and a return to the proper normal. I'd argue that's worth the risks a thousand times over.
This looks like a classic example of concentrating on one risk to the exclusion of others to me, in other words to worry about the risk of vaccine damange while not considering the risks of contracting coronavirus. We know that the majority who contract it don't die, and (I think) the majority of those who survive don't have any apparent short term effects. But we have no more idea of the long term effects of having contracted coronavirus than we do of the long term effects of any vaccine.
So a politician using a 4 year old child for a political stunt is the same as the adult children of a scientist agreeing to test a vaccine their parent is involved in?
Did she do this as a media stunt? If so it doesn't seem to have worked because it took a while for me to find an article even mentioning it.
Bantamzen
Established Member
Isn't that exactly what we did when we partily shut down the economy & cancelled literally millions of medical appointments / treatments? We concentrated on the virus and stuffed everything else? I'm afraid when it comes to a new vaccine, you could potentially effect far more people getting it wrong than the virus could effect. So rushing it is not an option.
Given that there are now tens of millions of cases worldwide, many of which are months old I think by now if there were significant numbers of long term effects we'd be starting to see more evidence than the few cases that the media seem grimly determined to root out.
Well 1) even if so, that doesn't justify such reasoning.
And no, I don't think that's the case at all. How well could the NHS have treated other conditions if coronavirus was sweeping through the population?
And without a vaccine, it may be that in fact as many people contract coronavirus as would have the vaccine.
Bantamzen
Established Member
The whole point of the original set of measures where to allow the NHS to ramp up capacity, and create specialist covid facilities which is something that epidemiologists recommend as an effective measure because care & medical settings are major sources of spread. This was achieved, and largely never used. This fact seems to have been lost.
So are you endorsing what would effectively be a mass experiment by rushing a vaccine through? There are reasons why every single vaccine developed in modern times are not rushed, and go through sets rigorous trials and evaluations. Look what could have happened if Trump and some other world leaders have endorsed hydroxychloroquine as a treatment / cure, and this is a drug that is clinically tested. You simply cannot rush these things, because even if tens of thousands die or have serious long term effects, any treatment / vaccine will be administered to millions & if anything is wrong in the original composition of the vaccine, or the mass production of it, you could face far more serious consequences.
Its for these reasons that scientists are always very, very cautious about talking up any vaccine even after they have been approved, let alone when they are still far from certification.
You're the one saying that any vaccine will be "rushed", not me.
I'm not suggesting that we vaccinate everyone with anything until it has gone through all the stages required - and if we do have one I would be looking carefully at what testing it has had before agreeing to be vaccinated.
But I am saying that to only look at the risks of a vaccine without looking at the risks of not taking it is not a good approach.
Bantamzen
Established Member
But you must consider the risks before the advantages. Vaccines are often very widely distributed very rapidly, so you must ensure that the risks are as minimal as possible because once administered to a wide body of the population there is no turning back if you get the vaccine wrong. So whilst you aren't using the word "rushed", you are pretty much implying that it should be.
I am saying that the rational approach is to compare the risks of any vaccine with the risks of not having it.
You keep bringing the "rushed" nature of a potential vaccine up and then suggesting that I'm supporting such a thing.
Considering risks of something in isolation of the advantages is not sensible.
How could you decide whether to take a 5% risk of dying from surgery without considering the risk of not having it?
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
No, you must make a balanced risk-benefit judgement.
Bantamzen
Established Member
And you seem to be suggesting that you should prioritise the risks of the virus over the risks of a largely untested vaccine. Currently the risks from the virus are still statistically small, whereas we don't yet know the risks of the various vaccines being tested. Protest it all you wish, but you seem to be implying that we should be getting one of the vaccines (do you have a preference yet) out before fully evaluating the potential side effects (i.e. risks) because potential protection against the virus is priority over people becoming ill as a result of any vaccine chosen.
birchesgreen
Established Member
People should remember that all vaccines have potential side effects, the yearly flu vaccine for example will give some people adverse side effects. Nothing much is perfect in this world, risk is with everything.
Bantamzen
Established Member
They do, and its why they need to be understood and ensured that they are not as bad, or worse than the effects of the virus they are designed to deal with.
Why do you keep putting words in my mouth?
You are inferring a lot of things that I'm not implying.
I am saying you need to balance the risks of a vaccination vs not vaccination.
If you want to have an argument with someone over whether we should "rush" a vaccine, you need to find somone who supports that.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Yes, correct - that's a balanced risk benefit analysis, which is a bit different from what you originally said
Bantamzen
Established Member
I'm not looking to argue, just pointing out that your approach seems to imply you would wish the vaccine to be released before the full side effects (aka risks) of are known.
Yes, correct - that's a balanced risk benefit analysis, which is a bit different from what you originally said
Is it? I don't agree.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
What you said was that you must consider the risks before the benefits. That isn't a balanced risk benefit analysis because you're giving more weight to the risks.
But if you meant both must be considered equally, cool
OK I understand.
But it's not black and white like that. There isn't some point during testing at which you suddenly know "the full side effects".
The more testing is done, the better the risks are understood. A decision has to be made at which point enough testing has been done that risks are considered low enough to roll a vaccine out.
I think you're saying that this decision should not be influenced by any consideration of the risks of not having the vaccine.
I cannot see any way in which this makes sense.
To take to extremes - suppose a virus far more contagious than coronavirus was spreading through the UK with a 95% death rate.
Would you still insist on a vaccine going through the same certification process as - say - a vaccine for the common cold?
Scrotnig
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This isnt quite like that though. Her children are fully grown adults able to make their own decisions.
Whilst anyone can be manipulated, I doubt that's what's going on here.
Plus, it wasn't used as a 'look this is safe' publicity stunt in the way Gummer's escapade was. In this case it came about later as part of some general information. She isn't even claiming that doing this proves it is safe in any way.
Bantamzen
Established Member
Frankly yes, because any vaccine that is being designed for rapid mass rollout has to be as safe as possible, and so would have to go through exactly testing and evaluation processes as any other (noting of course that there are no vaccines for the common cold, some of which are caused by the same family of viruses). What would happen if it turns out that the vaccine caused a similar rate of mortality? Answer, even more dead than not using it.
I assume you can see the irony in your post?
You are focussing solely on the risk of covid, which for the vast overwheliming majority is negligible and who are possibly not even going to come into contact with.
vs the risk of deliberately injecting something into people which by any standard has not gone through the breadth and depth of processes that would normally be applied, has been created with every financial and political incentive to fudge/lie but somehow present it as safe. Organised by the Governments and corporations in whom trust is (rightly) at an all time low.
That is idiotic. I’ll be declining because I can see both risks thanks, and yours is far higher.
What you said was that you must consider the risks before the benefits. That isn't a balanced risk benefit analysis because you're giving more weight to the risks.
But if you meant both must be considered equally, cool
If only we’d had a more balanced “risk
v. benefit” approach taken to the entire Covid situation, maybe we wouldn’t now be facing the worst recession for 300 years.
I'm afraid I can't - because that's not what I was doing.
But you're right - this discussion is indeed becoming idiotic.
But you're saying you have evaluated both risks and made a decision accordingly - which is all I was advocating.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
It's quite difficult to do a risk benefit analysis if you don't know what the risks actually are, as was the case in March.
I think we can be fairly sure that the government had a little think about what the lockdown might do to the economy before imposing it.
No - it doesn't have to be as "safe as possible" - it has to be safer than the alternative.
And that would certainly involve having good evidence that it won't actually kill more people than if it's not used.
I don't know there is any intention to remove any of the normal steps in certifying a vaccine anyway, though it looks as if the intention is to get through them a lot more quickly than usual.
I suspected you couldn’t.
Are you seriously trying to claim credit for someone considering both sides? The evidence it has nothing to do with you is above...
bramling
Veteran Member
That assumes the government had some idea how long lockdown was likely to last. I think it’s fair to say none of us expected it to drag on this long.
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