To wonder why they can’t make a Covid vaccine that actually fucking works?

[Capitane]

Everyone I’ve known who’s had it/got it has been vaccinated and/or boosted.

There’s been two years in which to create a vaccine that actually works rather than just reduces symptoms, in some cases…

Why don’t you go out and make the vaccine then?

Population level data.

It's the old age conumdrum for epidemiologists - you can't know what would happen in a paralell universe where someone did not get vaccinated, so you must triangulate various methods to approximate an answer.

One way is by comparing large groups of exchangable people (i.e., controlling for age, sex, ethnicity SES, health factors etc). It is very obvious from analyses like this that vaccination reduces chance of infection, illness, severe outcomes and death.

The vaccine makes you less likely to die from it, it's not to prevent you getting it. As they thought it might takes years and years to make a vaccine I think we've been extraordinarily lucky with it.

I’m very glad you and your family are ok.

Unfortunately the same can’t be said for my 37 year old neighbour who had no pre-existing conditions and was dead from Covid within the week. This was prior to the vaccine being available and I have no doubt that she would still be with us now if she’d had the opportunity to be vaccinated prior to catching it.

This is absolutely anecdotal, in the same way as your ‘evidence’. But she’s still dead from
Covid.

Don’t even think about questioning the effectiveness of the sacred vaccine, OP. It’s not allowed.

It's super annoying isn't it op? I reckon you should write to someone and complain. Or maybe you could could mix up a few bits in your kitchen and send that off to the government, see if it works any better.

😂

1. The vaccine was never intended to stop people being infected - that’s impossible - it’s intended to help people survive it.
2. The above had been discussed in detail in the press in every country in the world, for years now. Maybe read the news.
3. A deadly disease turned up and you were offered state of the art protection from it, at government expense. Your response is to whinge, how entitled are you. 👀
4. Excited to hear what your contributions to science have been?

It works really well. It’s impossible to make and distribute a vaccine that would stop everyone catching covid. It’s an RNA virus so it mutates really quickly, it wouldn’t be feasible to create a vaccine for the antigens on each individual strain-by the time one vaccine was formulated another mutation would have arisen. It was never the goal to prevent everyone gettting covid. The goal was to reduce the severity and death rates to a level the health care system could cope with. This has worked really well; they rolled out the vaccine at an incredible speed.

Of course it is, these kinds of posts are silly @TinaYouFatLard

There must be hundreds of independent research bodies testing effectiveness, safety etc in various demographic groups, deciding whether offering it to people is worthwhile.

This doesn't mean people aren't going to massively roll their eyes at a layperson complaining "the vaccine" doesn't work.

It was oversold to start with given that it’s very difficult to make effective vaccines for respiratory infections hence the flu vaccine is only 45-60% effective. The TB vaccine isn’t massively effective against transmission /infection but stops the bacteria entering the blood.

Arguably it’s actually the milder Omicron variant that has resulted in people getting less sick with Covid.

I refuse to believe that there’s still people who don’t have even the barest grasp on how vaccines work, or are still banging on with daft conspiracy nonsense.

I would recommend staying away from social media and indeed the MN COVID board

@Capitane the vaccines have worked extraordinarily well considering what scientists were up against - it's much harder to design effective vaccines in certain contexts (RNA based virus, high mutation rate, immune naive population) . What would you have done differently?

That’s the problem - the Covid vaccines have been inoculating for the previous strain. Once they’ve got the jab for the latest strain, it’s already mutated.

Are you dead? Are your friends dead?
It works then.
The vaccine was designed to prevent death, not the sniffles and a head ache.

We have this thing that tells us, at a population level, exactly that. It's called "statistics".

Classic 😂This deserves pinning to the front of the Classics section

Anecdotal, ahhh, just brilliant.

I've had three jabs then got Covid and was pretty ill. I am not going to bother with the fourth jab unless there's some sort of new fatal strain.

Perhaps you might be the one to demonstrate it’s fatal. Then what?

It's not meant to stop you getting it. That's not the purpose of vaccination. It's meant to reduce deaths and stop you getting as seriously ill as you would otherwise. So yes. It did actually work.

This

That's massively unlikely 😂

It's a novel virus that we don't fully understand. It mutates. It's incredible that we've got this far so quickly, especially when you consider the alternative. I know 2 people who died pre vaccine so feeling a bit under the weather vs dying is a plus. I had covid in the summer. I felt awful for 5 days then suddenly better. Lasted much less time than getting flu.

Everyone saying the vaccine was never meant to stop you getting covid as if we weren't told to have it to protect the vulnerable, as if care workers didn't lose their jobs, as if people weren't banned from going to events.

This.

It does what it was intended to do.

It’s not really a problem, or at least not a problem anyone can fix. It’s just how viruses and vaccines work. To answer the OPs question, why they can’t make a vaccine that “works” is basically because the virus mutates quickly. However the vaccine works enough to fulfill its purpose. It stops people getting really ill in enough cases that the burden on the NHS is noticeably reduced. That’s all that was realistic to achieve with the vaccine.
no one has spent the last 2 years trying to develop a vaccine that is 100% effective at stopping people getting the vaccine because it would be an impossible task/a waste of time.