You can't deny that that will need explaining, i'm using my mother as a barometer - it's valid to be apprehensive on the basis that was said to be 'safe' when it was not. She doesn't follow changes in clinical protocols, many won't, and the vaccine will be useless unless there is mass adoption. A bigger challenge is dealing with the issue that the swine flu jab has caused narcolepsy in some.
Last I read it was around 1 in 55,000. So you're about a thousand times less likely to get narcolepsy with the jab than you are to die if you get swine flu.
This. According to the NHS' statement, which is presumably from the study published in the BMJ, the highest risk estimation is 1 in 52,000 - a 0.002% risk. The simple explanation is that it's been 63 years since thalidomide was introduced, that's a long time for us to get better at medicine. It's right to be concerned about anti-vaccination sentiment, but I try to apply the principle of charity wherever possible. Most people aren't ferverent anti-vaxxers, you have to be pretty hard-core to refuse the vaccine and instead accept the much higher risk of allowing COVID-19 to continue unabated.
That's pretty much the line I had to take, mum won't be one of the first in line but she's not far behind. I had to tell her it's a risk/reward issue and if we don't do anything expect more lockdowns. She's not a fan of those. Still, it's healthy to not blindly stick your arm out without checking
Same thing could be applied to literally any drug the doctor gives you... But you don't see any nutjobs in the street with placards proclaiming that painkillers are a plot by Sylvester Stallone to take over the world
Ah i'm just talking about convincing people like my my mum, she's not writing placards. Yet. I knew it! He's not called 'Sly' for no reason!
Jokes aside: All I'm saying is if she had "insert random medical issue" she'd accept the treatment recommended by the doctor, so she should treat vaccines the same way. Or to put it another way: As a society we've reached a point where we trust doctors to slice us open and tinker around with vital organs, so it is dumb to reject the opinion of a doctor when they tell people to get a vaccine.
Key difference there is that it would be the opinion of a surgeon who didn't develop the vaccine. He's opinion would be just that, an opinion, and not based on knowledge but on a general trust for the medical profession as a whole. Opening up a patient and tinkering around with vital organs is more mechanical in nature, whereas shooting a foreign substance directly into the bloodstream is to mess around with the software. In any case. In the end it's purely based on trust and it's a big ask to expect people to blindly trust what they are being told. That so many people out there are wary is understandable imo.
Also, the internals don't generally change too much and have been hacked around with for hundreds of years to practice (not all of which went well, either - trepanning and leeches, anyone?). If you're going to trust some dude(s) what give you a relatively unknown substance cos we tested it out the other week, honest mate, no side effects or nuffin, then we might as well go and see Dave on the corner, turn the stereo up, flick the lights on and off and at least have some fun whilst we wait and see what the next stage of this circus is. In fact, I know someone first hand who has been undergoing what should be minor shoulder surgery for about ten or more years now, because they keep doing it wrong and sometimes even leave their kit inside him before stitching him back up, so no - even that area of medicine isn't without its (admittedly far less likely) risks. And that doesn't include those who have passed through operating table errors such as an aversion to anaesthetic or similar. If nothing else, this is all making me take a lot more stock of my own mortality and try to trim down all the unimportant clutter in my life.
To be fair it is a tenth of the price and easy to distribute. It's also being reported as "up to 90% effective" for those who received a half dose before a full dose. I suppose numbers of people getting covid who have the jab are still quite small so the error bar is presumably quite high.
I'm not here to convince anyone, especially when there's so much motivated reasoning on display. I don't blindly 'trust some dude(s) what give you a relatively unknown substance cos we tested it out the other week, honest mate, no side effects or nuffin'.... I trust that the process of clinical trials that the drug goes through has proven its efficacy and safety I trust that the review process for those trials has highlighted issues or shortcomings I trust that the people giving me that injection have had sufficient medical training I trust that the training they had is based on a sound body of medical knowledge I trust that the sound body of medical knowledge has had hundreds of years worth of work in it It is quite far from 'shooting a foreign substance directly into the bloodstream [...] to mess around with the software' (which doesn't even make sense BTW, but what do you expect from the person who posted it) or 'a relatively unknown substance cos we tested it out the other week, honest mate, no side effects or nuffin'.
Shame the anti vax morons won't follow through on their boycott threat, holidays would be so much nicer without them...
I reckon COVID will actually be the silver bullet that seriously cripples and diminishes the anti-vaxxer movement. The threat is so credible, the result will be so tangible, and the benefits such a relief, that I think a lot of milder social-media tinfoil hatters will abandon their tinfoil hats on this particular point and just go "oh, fine, vaccinate me". Movements like that snowball based on number of credulous members reciting the narrative; those numbers will drop a lot. Anti-vax will go out of fashion, as it were, as more and more people recognise that the day's been saved by a vaccine. I hope.
If wiping out smallpox won't convince them nothing will. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
