A few covid things I wanna clear up

Vaccinated people are still getting infected, and not in small numbers going by the UK stats. Surely this is what will create mutations to evade the vaccine? Can anyone explain why this isn't the case?

I [i]think[/i] the idea is that if enough people are vaccinated and the vaccine is effective against [i]serious[/i] illness among patients, even if not preventing infection, pressure on the health system will be low enough that we'll be able to live with it circulating in the relatively lower levels and certainly causing fewer hospitalisations.

What's really worrying me this week is that apparently we had one patient in the ICU and on a ventilator despite being [i]fully[/i] vaccinated. The report didn't mention which vaccine this person received but that's an incredibly worrying development IMO.

For one, people on immunosuppressants don’t develop enough antibodies from the vaccine to be properly protected. What we need is herd immunity, once we have the right ratio of vaccinated people it’ll stop circulating except for smaller outbreaks. The more it circulates, the more variants we end up with and it seems the virus is bettering itself each time.

1) It seems that your chances of suffering from long covid reduce in line with your chances of suffering from Covid - but there is certainly less info on this than on the main bout of illness. Interestingly there have been some indications that the vaccine helps sufferers of long covid get over that.

2) It won't end. Covid will eventually get more benign as people build up natural immunity from infection and vaccination.

There is no prospect that covid will ever disappear. We hope that the rate of new variants will slow as more people are vaccinated which reduces how long the virus lasts in the body and the number of people infected which reduces chances to mutate.

3) Some people can't be vaccinated (too young, immunocompromised, etc...)- they rely on everyone else around them to get vaccinated, so when someone refuses to get vaccinated, they hurt those who can't be vaccinated.

Additionally, if not vaccinated it dramatically increases the possibility of mutations and creates a new variant that will evade vaccines in future. That in addition to more people getting covid if not vaccinated which further increases the possibility of mutation.

This really isn't that worrying - even with the most effective vaccine, it was never expected that nobody would get sick/die, it would just reduce the amount who did. That from all the 100's of people hospitalised and having gone through ICUs since we since we started vaccinating shows that they work exceptionally well

Well this is just wrong. Obviously if the virus' spread is inhibited, it's opportunity to mutate is reduced. the WHO agree with this https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-effects-of-virus-variants-on-covid-19-vaccines

Vaccines prime our immune system to deal with a virus and eliminate it more quickly than we would if we weren't vaccinated. This reduces how much the virus can multiply, reducing both the severity and duration of any associated illness.

Vaccination therefore results in fewer virus particles being produced and a shorter illness / shorter infectious period, all which reduce the opportunity for mutation.

Standard childhood vaccinations e.g. measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, polio, tuberculosis haven't caused mutations that evade vaccines, they have practically elimated what were once common illnesses.

The high numbers released yesterday, 900 or so, stated that 5% of cases were fully vaccinated people.

Some are getting alarmed at that, but if people had listened to the vaccine efficacy rates then these numbers if anything should be a comfort. Moderna is supposed to be 94% effective and Pfizer 95%. This is being borne out and confirmed in the case numbers.

Well I can only speak for myself, but anti vaxxers annoy me for the following reasons.

1. They can only choose to be anti vax because almost everyone else gets vaccinated. They will never have to live in a world where smallpox comes to town and kills 25% of those go get infected because smallpox was eradicated using vaccines.

Vaccines are what allow them to be anti vax.

2. Aside from vaccines, there is no other way out of this pandemic other than either having lockdowns ad infinitum (no thanks) or letting the virus run rampant, killing tens of thousands of people in Ireland, leaving a few hundred thousand with long covid and putting monumental and totally unfair levels of pressure on our health care workers. I think promoting this approach as a healthy person with the best chance is selfish.

3. Anti vax people are wilfully ignorant. That's what is most annoying of all. They are choosing to believe pseudo science peddlers and Facebook nuts over those who are clearly well qualified to have an opinion on vaccines. Vaccines are one of the safest forms of medical intervention. They are far far safer in this case than getting covid, by a couple of orders of magnitude. It takes 2 minutes to look this up from a reputable source.

No - this is a really common misconception.

The Delta variant is NOT any less severe than previous variants and in fact the evidence is the opposite.

The difference is that the SYMPTOMS of MILD disease are more like a cold than the previous variants which resemebled flu. It's like saying the Wuhan virus caused a loss of taste and smell - it did, but it also killed a lot of people. The Delta variant is exactly the same; you may get no symptoms, you may get mild cold-like symptoms, or you may get a really severe respiratory infection that puts you in hospital.

It is absolutely not an indication that humans have adapted to the virus. We are not remotely near herd immunity in unvaccinated settings.

This is entirely true, the more chances a virus has to replicate the more chances there are for a mutation to develop. The larger the unvaccinated population and the more it spreads, the higher the likelihood of a new dangerous variant

That's the problem with Covid.

People may be infectious for days before they become symptomatic so the old theory about the less deadly variant becoming dominant does not hold.

The more virulent variants will dominate. It will be sheer luck if they are more or less severe.

This ticks most of the boxes of the issues we all face in dealing with people completely hooked on misinformation. It's like covid misinformation bingo. I'm not going to bother contradicting any of the wild claims because we're a year and a half into this nearly and there's just no point as you're unlikely to accept any contradiction anyway, it's just a sad, sad indictment of modern society that this horsesh1t is so prevalent. Twisted people creating and spreading it and mentally unwell people lapping it up.

If you’re interested in the position of possibly the worlds most credible person on the subject: https://vimeo.com/553518199

In other words, here's a link to my favourite expert. He's also suggested not giving vaccines to under 50s, an obviously unwise suggestion.

People are challenging your view of him as being credible. Do some proper factchecking on him. He's one of many who've claimed to be right, in misleading ways that undermine real life efforts to deal with COVID. You're not doing your claims any favours by linking to a 2 hour video.

He’s the most cited doctor on early Covid treatment, and possibly even on Covid period.

I honestly don’t know why I bother. You’re clearly so demoralised and unwilling to think critically about this situation that you’re too far gone. Anyway, I gave you the video, feel free to rip it apart if you think it’s incorrect :)

You’re wrong. See how easy that is to claim?

If you want to refute specific claims that are made in the interview, please do though.

Nice fact check. Did you even read it? It claims that at least 4,000 people did not die from the vaccine and that the spike protein is not toxic. You know you can have your own thoughts about this stuff - I'd love to hear them some day.

Edit: Also quite interesting that your 'response' to one interview is a fact check of another interview. I get it, your rights have been taken from you for a year and a half, and you're really excited to get them back from the state. If something is too good to be true, it deserves at least scrutiny, don't you think?

I'm not claiming you're wrong, you're free to claim what you want, just as I'm free to point out that your own view of other posters is completely blinkered. Anyway he really ain't a credible source for me so moving on.

We all know the mess up that AZ had with trials, older people and then MHRA not being connected to the EU database (or trawling their own) and missing the rare blood clots which was identified and a treatment worked out once J&J got involved, so we probably don't need to go there again :)

There have been no cases of serious blood clots in Ireland, hopefully this remains the case now they know who's more susceptible and can treat it. I also would refrain from "death" as the only statistic to compare against, ending up in hospital on a ventilator can have serious lifetime repercussions for your respiratory system, leaving you susceptible to a range of other diseases.

Good video on what's being going on in relation to pre-hospital therapeutics.