"Cannot be COMPLETELY eliminated". "Could potentially". The source you presented does not refute the statement you're responding to in any way. With the vaccine, people have the virus for less time and with fewer symptoms which reduces transmissibility.

Somebody's opinion on a blog is not a source of information. Where has it been shown to cause far more harm than good? Can you quantify it? This is explicitly an anti-vaxxer/anti-masker/anti-science talking point, especially with the bogus "It's like trying to stop a mosquito with a chain-link fence.". That's not at all what it's like. What masks do is prevent your breath from launching in front of you like a rocket where all your viral load would have gone. The anti-masker in the blog's claims are actually hilarious if you think about it for a second, because they contradict themselves. How is it supposedly blocking oxygen while the virus is like a mosquito passing through a chain link fence? Air passes through a chain link fence even more easily than a mosquito. It's like simultaneously suggesting that mosquitos pass through this supposed chain link fence but the chain link fence doesn't allow enough water to flow through it.


America's Frontline Doctors is a disinformation site designed to push propaganda to influence people like yourself. Every citation of this in any point you mentioned is dismissible. Also funny that you don't trust the many entities with data, but you trust this one specific entity which has proven itself untrustworthy whose founder participated in the Capitol insurrection. Any mention of this entity is dismissible, and any argument you have citing this entity holds no water.

There's a pandemic right now and a vaccine is the best way to deal with it. Further COVID-19 is too dangerous to allow for a population to build any natural immunity, so that is completely off the table. This is one doctor's unsubstantiated opinion about something that at one point in the video even started letting the weasel words slip. It sounds good to you because it supports your position while you don't actually understand what they are saying. Just because someone has their PhD does not mean you should take what they say at face value.

The vaccine has a known list of side effects. This isn't the same as adverse events and isn't what VAERS is for. This article articulates where this piece of misinformation comes from and why it is wrong.


Again your only source is that illegitimate disinformation site, which is ironic as you parrot the dangers of misinformation. Further the white paper link is a blank page. If the risks are greater for the vaccine, then why are governments everywhere in the world reporting similar data about vaccines actually working with nearly zero risk? Are you suggesting every government entity in the world is colluding with each other (including countries that are enemies of one another) to suppress the same information? Why are deaths, critical care, and hospital cases significantly down in highly vaccinated areas then while restrictions are much looser and cases are up? Most of the time when something is removed from Google/Youtube, it is not a dialog but a disinformation campaign. Nobody is trying to prevent dialog. Nobody is afraid of having a conversation. This is a fantasy made up by you or whichever disinformation propaganda you're consuming.

Yet if you look at the numbers, COVID-19 has killed about 8-10x in the same age group than the flu would have. Turns out flu outcomes are also skewed by age.

Their claims are based on their pilot study, not on the real world. We already have real world data now showing that vaccines are effective at preventing serious disease and death. The anecdotes you are posting don't offer any context, don't compare it with deaths of unvaccinated people, and don't elaborate about how long after being vaccinated they contracted the virus. These editorialized news articles are not relevant if you are looking for truth.

For example in my province, the data shows that COVID is overwhelmingly a disease for the unvaccinated. BCCDC Data Summary - 22 July 2021 - pages 17 and 18 you will find a comparison of cases/hospitalizations/deaths between unvaccinated/vaccinated individuals. The data shows that a roughly equal distribution of the population was split between unvaccinated/1 dose/2 dose (1/3 each) at that time.



There are still other pieces above I haven't responded to which needs to be ripped apart but I'm bored now.

Doctors generally won't let you use a laptop when you're on a ventilator, so that could be skewing the numbers a bit.

No. My comment was rather obscure, but not incorrect. It was expected that vaccines would work against other variants because the immune system is trained (by vaccines) to neutralize the virus by reacting to the spike protein. Vaccines are effective against variants with similar proteins. Natural immunity does not necessarily produce the right antibodies, does not necessarily protect you against COVID-19. It only reacts to pieces of the virus, but not always reacts to spike protein. Therefore the antibodies could be useless against infection. It could be possible that symptoms disappear, but a reinfection occurs without even contact, and that is because the virus wasn't eliminated from the body. The antibodies produced can be useless against SARS-CoV-2. It's very likely that your natural immunity won't allow you to fight the virus, let alone donate plasma.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 15 2021, 12:05 am by Luigi.

You've got the broad strokes right, but the details of what is actually going on are a bit muddled in your explanation.

In someone with a normally functioning immune system, their immune system will create antibodies to the spike protein, as well as dozens of other proteins on the virus as well. When the virus mutates, the spike protein is highly conserved, that is does not mutate much, because it is a very specific structure (what gives coronaviruses their name, in fact) and copies of the virus with mutations on the spike will be less likely to infect human cells and thus be selected against (ie, die out) anyway. The other proteins on the virus are much more likely to mutate as they aren't as central to the actual functioning of the virus. So if a new strain of the virus affects someone who has natural immunity, the antibodies they created for the spike protein will be useful against the new infection, but the antibodies for the other proteins may be less effective.

Vaccines specifically target the spike protein because it is highly conserved, ie they're designed so that they ignore most of the mutations that will happen because most mutations are not on the spike protein. Another aspect of vaccines as why they're effective is that they provoke a strong immune response from the body, by creating huge numbers of spike proteins all at once (as opposed to a virus that more slowly replicates in the body), and by giving the immune system only the spike protein to focus on and not all of the other proteins to distract it. So the immune system is trained to a high degree specifically against only the spike protein.

The final major aspect of vaccines and their effectiveness is that the body normally takes 1-2 weeks to mount a truly effective response to viruses like SARS-COV-2. During that time if you are infected with the actual virus, it will be growing in number every day, and killing cells in your body that do important things (like the cells in your lungs that let you breathe). Just this time delay means that by the time your body is properly ready to fight the virus, it has already been weakened and suffered a lot of damage. But vaccines let your immune system prime itself without undergoing any of the damaging illness part.

There is another complication that is specific to COVID-19, SARS and MERS (other diseases can exhibit this too, but it's fairly uncommon) and that is that in some individuals, what actually makes you really ill from COVID-19 so that you need to be hospitalized is that your immune system can go into overdrive, which is called a cytokine storm and starts damaging other parts of your body with inappropriate and unrequired inflammation, not just attacking the virus itself. This seems to be due to the length of time it takes for your body to build up antibodies when first infected and the virus being able to grow in your body - if you already have a huge defense force of antibodies ready to specifically fight off the virus, then it's generally kept under control and eventually eliminated before it can reach the point where the cytokine storm develops. So that's another reason why the vaccines are very effective at preventing hospitalization and death, even if they don't totally stop infections or transmission in the first place: the vaccine helps your body keep the virus under control to prevent a cytokine storm developing, but can't entirely stop the vaccine replicating and you becoming sick or passing it on to others. SARS and MERS were both more deadly specifically because they were much more likely to result in cytokine storms and for the disease progression to reach the cytokine storm state sooner.

I've gathered the above from a lot of reading. The following video covers a lot of these points in a very accessible manner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVRjB-hv4BE and also this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXfEK8G8CUI

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Aug 15 2021, 4:21 am by Lanthanide.

GL fighting off like 18 other peoples' responses dude; I'll leave you to it and won't add any more to your plate.

I'm not here to argue, all this stemmed from curiosity and a question. I said my piece, I just want to move forward.

Got my first dose of vaccine today (Moderna), so you can ignore my previous answer in the poll.

If you forego your participation in society completely, this would be a fairly straightforward position to take. If you like going to grocery stores to buy food, where other non-low-risk people also go, you should consider your effect on them as well.

Are you arguing that because the risk cannot be "completely eliminated", we ought not do something which will "significantly reduce" the risk?



The Pfizer vaccine has received FDA approval, if we're going on that basis it is no longer experimental. Semantically speaking, I understand that the term "experimental" applies in the sense you wrote above, but in the context of biomedical research I don't see that the idea has much ground to stand on.

Additionally, your VAERs numbers are quite wrong - here's an important detail from the CDC link I originally provided: "Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem". For a simple fact-check on these numbers, I would start by looking up the CDC death tables to try to find the 1.2 million unaccounted-for deaths you projected.

Regarding the video testimonials, believe them at your own risk, but remember in the case of a pandemic your choices put others at risk as well.

What're everyone's thoughts on mandatory vaccines?

Is there a certain level where it is acceptable or not?

e.g. maybe you're ok if a privately owned grocery store requires patrons to show vaccination status to enter, but it's too far if it's enforced on all grocery stores across the nation or even just the state?

I was pretty surprised my university ended up requiring everyone to get the vaccine to return to school. Personally I think that's too far. It sets precedent for them to enforce permanent bodily-related things (it's not like you can later become un-vaccinated after you leave) so long as they believe it for the benefit of society, and if you don't agree, you're just cut off.

Already had mandatory vaccines as a kid growing up. If you were at school you got measles mumps rubella, hepatisis B, whooping cough etc.

I don't think it's any different to other body related things. If you can't see properly without glasses you aren't allowed drive unless you get glasses. If you have seizures you aren't allowed drive/etc unless you take medicine that stops your seizures. Etc. The govt puts fluoride in your water to reduce tooth cavities, and we all drink it down.

I think for the vast majority of people there is no legitimate reason NOT to have a vaccine. The people against it fall into two categories: ignorant or misinformed. By making it mandatory it puts pressure on those people to get vaccinated regardless of their personal thoughts on the vaccine.

I have said earlier that the strategy to use against vaccine hesitant people is to apply peer pressure. Because whether they accept it or not their false beliefs are increasing death and sickness from COVID. If you are vaccine hesitant and unhappy with the treatment you are receiving from others, I believe you again have more or less two options. Either get the vaccine, or be silently vaccine hesitant. If you speak about being vaccine hesitant openly you are going to get dogpiled by the majority who are all using the peer pressure technique to convince you into taking the vaccine.

I'm all for mandatory vaccination. Unless you have a medical exemption (and I mean a real, diagnosed one not "oh noes my RNA") there's no excuse not to get a vaccine as soon as you're able. Since some people are apparently unable to understand their duty to the collective good, we should be using any coercive measures available.

It's always been a thing that universities may require certain vaccines before you even start going there.

I just thought more about your "bodily-related" things. The govt also controls what drugs are legally made and sold and widely available, and they approve all food/drinks on supermarket shelves. So yeah it's all govt controlled. You think this is just vaccines? Wake up sheeple!

I thought even further about the "bodily-related" things. If I don't feel safe then I won't accept people that represent a danger to my health come close to me.
These coercive measures are to make them feel persuaded, not to punish them. Also, the government provides some health services for free, and everyone must pay taxes. So why not? While some people don't want to hear anything about punishing the body, I don't care if society is hedonistic, that's not my problem, yet we have jails that are not designed to provide a good living
Anyways, whether be a matter of social engineering or biopolitics, this is not about punishing others, and neither a matter of mere beliefs. We have a pandemic to stop, as soon as possible. The unvaccinated still have places to go, they just won't come close to people who's really not willing to get exposed. The opposite would be completely unfair.
We are living in very special times, all I wrote shouldn't sound far-fetched.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 2 2021, 3:41 pm by Luigi.

Got my second dose two days ago. Felt fine after the first one (Pfizer), but developed a fever in the evening after I got the second (Moderna). Was really uncomfortable while it was going on, but I was much better the morning after and now I'm feeling just fine again.

The local news sites report there's an alarming rise of cases where people who had suffered from COVID-19 are reporting neurological and/or psychiatric issues after the illness. I certainly would object to becoming dumber than I already am so I'm glad I've vaccinated - at least it wouldn't be as acute even if I do fall ill.

BTW the flu vaccination campaign has started over here. Let's not forget the other infections like measles or flu are still out there, even though hilariously enough the COVID lockdown was reported to have prevented the seasonal flu epidemic back in 2020.

I freaking hate colds specifically the sensation of a sore throat so I hope living in a more hygiene conscious society means I'll experience less of them.

The thing I'm most interested in seeing after this is whether or not wearing a mask when you're ill is going to become more common in the West. In a way it's always puzzled me why it's not a thing around here, but relatively common in several Asian countries.

If I dig up some of my photos from the times I was visiting Japan, South Korea and the other countries in that region - from the decade before - I'll probably find some images of people wearing masks even back then. I remember that custom being the subject of quite some surprise back then. If only we knew.

That region had to deal with a lot more outbreaks than we had. If anything I was surprised we didn't copy more of their strategies.