Vaccine-feeling worried

[2020yearfromhell]

I’m feeling really worried about this gradual
push to possibly have to have the vaccine, they say they won’t force us, but will likely make you unable to travel, go to festivals etc etc without it, so basically it is almost as if we’re being forced.
Why the sudden rush through of it and such a need for it from day one.
Anyone else feeling nervous? I really don’t want it as no idea what it is.

I'm with you OP.

It’s not a wind up thread and I’m not anti-vaccinations, I’ve had all the usual ones in my life. Can you not be concerned or start a discussion without someone calling wind up? Why a wind up, what would be the point.
I’m genuinely concerned and know people irl who feel the same. Tbh this thread is easing the worries a little.
I understand the extra push/resources etc behind it due to the pandemic, but I still worry it’s been v fast.
Please don’t call me selfish for feeling concerned for myself and my family for feeling anxious about that, we’re not selfish and this should be able to be discussed without people jumping in with talk like that.

I'm not looking forward to having to make the decision for my dc either. I worry that there will be long term side effects that they're not aware of yet. In my view, it's a gamble either way.

There are more important things in life than young people being able to go to festivals. I just want to be able to hug my 95-year-old gran again.

@AcornAutumn

OP I feel for you

I was desperately upset about this in March because I could see what was coming

I’ve had time to get used to it, I guess. The trouble for me is it won’t stop at live events and travel, I don’t do either. But hopefully by the time I’m made to have it, we’ll know more about the safety.

This is the 1976 one

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_swine_flu_outbreak

My father was a doctor and I think he’d say this is mad rush for profit. As a family, we had our vaccines but it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to be concerned about the speed here.

My mother might have to decide soon, she’s 82.

I won’t get into the civil,liberties aspect because I can see no one cares on MN.

I do care about civil liberties. I don’t want ours as a society to be restricted any longer. To get them back we need Covid to not be a threat to public health as it is now and it looks like a big part of that is the vaccine.

I am all for it being made de facto compulsory. No I don’t support strapping people down and forcibly injecting them but if you want to travel, get a job, go to concerts then you need to have it and if you don’t, you miss out.

Despite all the measures and everything we’ve been doing so far being for the collective good people don’t seem to twig the vaccine is the same. It’s not about you and your civil liberties and wants on a personal level any more than any other measure. People need to have it so that our hospitals stop being overwhelmed so we can get life back to normal. Plus do people think the government will put up with things the way they are currently and paying wages for the population when there’s a vaccine that would mean it’s not needed.

Don't be daft. It will not be mandatory and restrictions will not be put in place for those who do not have it

[quote BaylisAndHardon]@AcornAutumn I'd be interested to hear what the specific concerns are that your medical family have.

I'm sorry to hear of your father, but I'm not sure what you're insinuating regarding younger doctors. I'm not a particularly young doctor; I'm in my 30's. My colleagues are aged between 23 at newly qualified and mid 60's. What does the age of me or my colleagues have to do with confidence in the covid vaccine?

I'm yet to hear a concern more specific than that it 'seems a bit fast'.

If course it's fast- vast sums of money have been poured into this, along with tens of thousands of volunteers.

But if your family have valid concerns about a specific aspect of the way the vaccine has been developed, or the safety/regulatory laws in the UK, let me know because perhaps I'll be concerned too.[/quote]
Re younger doctors

They wanted to rush to give him anything that might work, without considering the side effects, and ergo, quality of life for a man in fragile health.

I just noticed the older doctors were more concerned with his quality of life.

Re the concerns, it’s the 1976 scenario. The unknown unknowns. One GP has gone as far as telling me she is “frightened” because the death rate and the speed of development simply don’t add up. It’s pushed by profit.

You’re a doctor, you’ll know all the stuff that goes on. There are absolutely great people working in medicine but there are also people who will be so over enthusiastic, things get rushed. Harms are ignored.

My mother’s now got internal bleeding which we suspect is caused by one of her meds. Yes, it’s a side effect, yes, it’s considered when prescribed.

What will happen with a new vaccine that we don’t know yet?

I’m happy for people to volunteer, that’s their business, but we might be heading to conditions that make it mandatory.

Once again - the vaccine is not going to be offered to everyone. So they can’t mandate something that they aren’t planning to give!

PS Baylis, did you fill in the government consultation about changes to new medical products/devices?

Don't get it then. You don't have to rejoin life after Covid. Nobody is forcing you to travel and go to festivals. You can stay permanently in your own type of outcast perpetual lockdown with other anti-vaxxers.
Without the vaccine, unrestricted travel and festivals wouldn't happen anyway.

@Funkypolar That’s being said at the moment tho..could it change?

Honestly OP I would try watching some the excellent webinars that have been released or listening to some of the podcasts about the vaccine. The key is to learn more about the process, understand it better. When the process is explained it's actually easy to see how it's been achieved in the time frame it has. It's a remarkable feat of brilliance by the world's scientists, not something we should fear.

This podcast is a good place to start for accessible info in my view:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mj18

I'm slightly worried as I'm on some medication that already affects what I can take, I can't take NSAIDs because my liver enzymes haywire, or decongestants because they could kill me. As far as I know it's only been tested on healthy people and the people who most need it probably aren't

@AcornAutumn you mean a repeat of the media hysteria ? Imperato was in charge of the Roll out of the vaccine.

'As for Imperato, remembering the day he was vaccinated for the cameras and the surrounding chaos gives him some concerns about what’s ahead in 2020. “I really see the beginnings of the same patterns of commentary about the Covid-19 vaccines and the trials,” he says. There’s no reason, he believes, why a mass vaccination effort could not be rolled out quickly, but he worries about the media context it will happen within. “There are so many talking heads, on television and on social media, commenting on every aspect of this pandemic,” he says. “Their credentials are not matched to what they're commenting on. I refer to them as trespassers.”

Gouda I ignore media as much as I can so I don’t know.

I get most of my covid info from the BMJ and contacts send me other stuff. Tbh I’m rather tired of reading about it though so I have sent a few messages saying “thanks, v interesting” without reading it

@Silverstripe

Why the sudden rush through of it and such a need for it from day one.

Kim there’s people that are dying

@BaylisAndHardon

I'm a doctor working in geriatrics and I can't wait for it either. I don't know any of my colleagues who won't get it.

In my experience I have only seen people who have no connection to science or medicine against it.

Judging from the vaccination threads on MN I get the distinct impression that the antivaxxers wouldn't have passed any science GCSEs.

Ginfordinner - excellent dinner, can I join?!

“ Judging from the vaccination threads on MN I get the distinct impression that the antivaxxers wouldn't have passed any science GCSEs.”

I’m getting the impression that

A) the pro lockdown folk have no knowledge of infection control or basic science

B) people are being accused of being anti vax when they’re just worried about a new one. The threads I’ve seen immediately get accused of being anti vax even when they’re clear they’ve had all theirs and give their children theirs and take the flu vaccine.

It’s such a shame reasonable discussion has gone out of the window but IRL there seems to be more respect.

OP I read the 1976 stuff, bit of a storm in a tea cup compared to COVID really. I was actually misdiagnosed with Guillane Barre after a tick bit - it was actually Lymes....not as scary as you might think and treatable...not that you'd want it mind, but I was thinking of something infinitely more shocking when you mentioned it.

I can't talk about the testing but my bro and partner would for a pharma company (nothing to do with vaccines it's sepsis research) but what they have said is that for anything drugs/treatments/vaccines you have to apply for funding for every single tiny stage - it's like no one wants to fund stage 3 if the results for stage two are ambivelent IKWIM. This happens painfully slowly and is often the reason development takes time, rather than the development process its self. Here that obstacle has been completely removed, money has been no object so of course things have moved quickly, but not detrimentally.

@goose1964 I don't know what health problems you have and I'm sorry that you do, but a lot of the vaccines out there many people with longstanding health conditions can't have. That's how vaccines and herd immunity really works, stopping it from spreading amongst the healthy people also stops it from spreading to the unhealthy people who can't he the vaccine.

This is crap.
While you worry about restricted travel or events, BUT... think about vast masses of people who never travel or go to festivals at all because... they simply cannot afford. They won't be arsed to get vaccinated, because... what for? Just like why have a passport...

@AcornAutumn

I understand where you're coming from to an extent but there is buckets of information out there about how the vaccine has been developed, how it's been done more quickly etc but lots of posters don't seem to look into it at all. If people are concerned why don't they do some research on the point? That's the bit I don't understand.

A bit more explanation on previous comments about these Covid vaccines being developed faster due to having money thrown at them.

Development and then approval of vaccines/drugs occurs in very many stages. Vaccine /development typically costs £1 billion pounds per product, that's not per successful product, it's per product and very many fail but still incur some or all of that cost.

So, normally, a company does step 1, sees whether it's looking promising, then does step 2, etc etc. So, there's usually a waiting period between each step where companies decide whether or not to proceed, manufacture more of the trial vaccine/drug, and various other things. So, a lot of time is spent waiting.

In contrast, in the development of the Covid vaccines, companies are preparing for subsequent steps before they know whether the previous steps have worked. Some are even doing large scale manufacture before they know whether the vaccine will get approval. They know full well that if the previous step(s) fail, they'll have wasted a load of effort and money that then gets discarded. But, if the previous step(s) work, they'll have saved a load of time

So, yes, the pharma companies are taking a risk. But, no, the vaccine developers aren't taking short cuts.

Yes, no one will know the long term side effects for very many years. That's normal, Phase 4 of the approval process is always post-authorization. For me, I'd rather the near term benefit for the greater population of a vaccine soon, than waiting for several years just in case there's a small risk of being vaccinated.

On the comments about flu vaccination not being mandatory: my understanding is that flu is less contagious, symptoms appear much faster (so easier to prevent transmission) and rarely puts as many people in hospital.

I'm an RN who did lots of shifts on covid wards early in the pandemic. The comparisons to flu really piss me off. The case mortality rate with covid is about 5 times higher. I don't think we've ever seen an infectious disease that can harm so many different organ systems. One of the reasons the Pfizer announcement was so exciting is because at over 90% efficacy health care workers who get it can finally feel comfortable working the covid wards.

Vaccine uptake will be demand driven. Those most at risk (the rational ones anyway) will want it first. Some of those who consider themselves low risk will hold back. That's how supply and demand will sort themselves out.

In the US vaccination is required to send your kids to school. It's not mandatory. You can home school if you really feel strongly about it. The government has a compelling interest in protecting children and school staff. I think we'll see similar restrictions for covid and I think that's a very good thing.

My post is in line with the one from WithGusto2 at 22.31