I can see why you feel that way then. Through my work, I see our daily census of covid patients in all of our hospitals and we have the highest numbers we’ve ever had since the start of the pandemic. The only people who are dying right now from it are the unvaccinated which unfortunately includes children under 12 now. The fundamental belief that “only I matter” is currently at odds with accepted theories of public health. The blind selfishness and stupidity takes precedence over anything else and it’s what is causing this thing to continue at the pace it is.
My old business partner and his wife are doubling down on the anti-vaxxing. He's a college grad and she has a Masters degree. They have three kids (13, 10 & 8) and if schools require it for them, they'll homeschool them. She's a teacher and if the schools require her to get vaxxed, she'll leave that industry (mind you, she's half way to her pension) When asked why he's so against it, he said because it hasn't been tested and the tests that are coming back are showing that it lowers the fertility of males and he doesn't want to be responsible if their kids want to have a family someday.
trying to get pregnant should be reason #1 for your friend to get vaccinated. Outcomes for unvaccinated pregnant women are (last I heard) at least 5x worse than their non-pregnant peers. And I fail to see how having MS makes sense not to get it either. Having underlying conditions is a much better reason to get the vaccine rather than not, since that can cause worse outcomes if you bet sick. Honestly there are extremely few things that I consider reasonable excuses not to get vaccinated at this point. My mom (a doctor) and my aunt (a statistics professor) both have MS and got vaccinated as soon as they were able. I got vaccinated at 19 and 23 weeks pregnant before there was anything more than anecdata available, but now ALL the available info suggests that not only is it safe before and during pregnancy, but critically important for pregnant women to get vaccinated.
Agreed. My wife got both shots at 8 months into her pregnancy. My son got the antibodies through her and through breast milk. In theory, anyway. He still isn't retarded as of about 15 minutes ago.
Try working in a blue collar job. Lots of people have gotten there shots, but the anti's are very vocal.
I think it depends on the area. My warehouse job, I’m pretty sure it’s an even split, but nobody really talks about it aside from some groups at break room tables. But there’s no arguing or preaching.
If they're not taking the vaccine to spite Big Pharma, are they instead taking Ivermectin courtesy of that small mom & pop apothecary Merck?
If you’re trying to sound smart, you could at least do us all the courtesy of making your boasts while wearing glasses. Spoiler That way we can trust you.
The only person I know in real life that had a good excuse to be hesitant was my dad. He came down with Guillain Barre Syndrome in 2019 and it damn near killed him. There are vaccines you can't take after having it and no one could tell him if it was safe to take the Covid vaccine. When the data showed that the MRNA vaccines appeared safe for him he took it. All the rest of the unvaxxed I know have the usual stupid reasons.
Most of my circle - all of my family (that I know of) and all of my coworkers - are vaccinated, two doses. Myself included. I have two people close to me who aren't, and I respect their decision. One, in particular, is a doctor and some of the emails he's shown me from the Ontario college of physicians would make the hair stand up on your neck. They risk censure or losing their license if they even discuss (publicly or one-on-one with patients) anything other than "you should be vaccinated at all costs." Same goes if they mention Ivermectin. One of his pharmacists told him that she's not allowed to issue a prescription for Ivermectin right now, and if she sees one they have been directed to not fill it and to report the physician. This isn't third party stuff; he showed me the emails form the various colleges on his phones. Not to be a broken record, but we should all find that alarming. Do I think you should go to TSC and chow down on horse de-worming gel? No. I do not. But if I want to discuss my concerns and options with a board-certified physician, it alarms me that the government, via the board, is dictating what they can and cannot say. Jesus, this is the same industry that created the opioid crisis, so you can't tell me this isn't 100% political.
See, I don’t respect your friends’ decisions on that. While I fully believe that negative reactions to the vaccines exist as some non-zero number, there has been no evidence that the vaccines pose a risk to public health that outweighs the risks of an unmitigated pandemic. It doesn’t even come close in terms of a meaningful comparison. On that basis, I just can’t comprehend the mindset for making decisions on such an irrational basis.
I agree with your assessment of the risks. Even if I assume the worst-case numbers that people are putting out for adverse vaccine reactions, it's far outweighed by the risk that Covid itself brings to the table. But you get to decide what goes into your body. We let people smoke and drink and be overweight and do a myriad of other stupid shit. If you choose not to accept something that could be beneficial to you, it's on you. Probably you'll be lucky and not too badly injured. But you might also die and kill everyone around you who made the same choice. Spoiler
Shrug. Perhaps I should have said, "I understand the hesitancy". It's not the same as "muh freedom" mother fuckers, and at least that's an argument with some reasoning attached to it. My perspective is...that's leadership in a public health crisis. Do not put your doctors in positions to be bullied or fucked with, there's a solution and horse medicine shouldn't be part of the conversation. I wish our leadership had the balls to come out and say, "Nope. Hard line here, folks. Your opinion is not equivalent to medical advice, and we're not letting taxpayers fund this bullshit." The decision-making in a public health crisis is usually life or death, and no offense, but fuck options. Options are a luxury. This is kind of like the draft: you gotta go, motherfucker, and all your sociology 101 shit doesn't matter. At least if this was the draft and you shot yourself in the foot, the only people who suffer are you and your family. I'd also be willing to bet Ivermectin is hard to come by, and the Canadian government doesn't want to pay a skyrocketing price for this kind of bullshit. The government dictates shit like this all the time, we're just used to it, and no one is crying about the injustice that putting lighter fluid in an IV hasn't been effectively eliminated as a cancer treatment, or that no doctor is allowed to suggest you go blow your brains out rather than get chemo, or that cocaine is a marvelous solution to the obesity epidemic. The irony is the folks resisting the medical/public health advice, and the spineless fucks who won't enforce this shit are the ones ensuring this fucking pandemic keeps marching on. FFS, this is a health issue: listen to your doctors, and it goes away. Listen to Facebook aunts who have the critical thinking skills God gave a squirrel next to an interstate, and we'll be dealing with variants of this forever.
D&D is exactly right. Just look at the statement from the lead of the largest, non-retracted, ivermectin (people ivermectin, not livestock ivermectin obviously) study to date. They are getting death threats because the results showed no effect. How insane is that? Why would you put frontline physicians in that position when they are already dealing with everything else? You think some random doc worked off their feet should have the ability to prescribe things off label that don't work? That just opens them up to malpractice lawsuits. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-11/ivermectin-no-effect-covid
Well, yeah. Just because I don’t like their decision doesn’t mean I want their rights taken away. I feel that way about abortion in most circumstances, too.
The email began something like, "As physicians, we occupy a unique place of trust in the public sphere..."