Family member just announced he won’t be getting the vaccine

[doireallyneedaname]

I had my first born one week before lockdown in February. My almost 80 year old father had come from abroad to visit us and meet baby, however due to the pandemic he was essentially stranded with us as we decided as a family it didn’t feel safe for him to travel home. We were happy for him to go home initially but we missed the boat as shit really hit the fan that week and travel restrictions were imposed. My brother and his daughter in particular were very against the idea of him travelling home. Brother even suggested he go and stay with his daughter if we “couldn’t have him.” Daughter was a uni student (who actually ended up with COVID) - so I’m glad I refused that one.

We spent 4 months shielding with him, terrified for his life as he is elderly and has high blood pressure, on top of learning how to look after a baby. It was lovely to have my only living parent with us and his first grandson, but it also tainted our experience of having our first baby, more so for my partner. Our house is tiny.

Eventually when things calmed down my dad decided it was time to go. So we packed him off, and I will never forget how I felt watching my frail old father walk to the airport terminal, FFP2 & face shield in tow. I cried the whole way home, terrified he’d catch it on the way back.

Fast forward to tonight, to top off an already horrific year, my dad has just had a biopsy to check for potential cancer. On the phone I ask if they’ve heard any more about when the vaccine will be available there, when brother (mentioned above, who was adamant dad couldn’t travel back in Feb) announces he won’t be having it as he’s not going to be a “guinea pig.”

I’m absolutely furious. After all of that.

I’ve spent weeks fighting anti vax comments from people in my life but I feel so angry that my own family are now saying the same kind of rubbish.

I’m having a rant I suppose. I just don’t even know what to say to him.

@doireallyneedaname

Also, I reckon politicians WILL have had it

Not even the CEO of Pfizer has had it apparently.

It's understandable you are worried about your father and brother, but these vaccines are very new and there are still many unknowns.

Once more data becomes available, you will be in a better position to advise them one way or the other

www.businessinsider.com/pfizer-ceo-albert-bourla-wait-cut-line-covid-19-vaccine-2020-12?r=US&IR=T

@miimblemomble

I also wonder if people who are very Covid-cautious are also more likely to be vaccine hesitant

I agree this is the case sometimes. It certainly happens to me - I try to be as careful as possible and follow the guidelines regarding the virus and by the same token I will need more certainties before deciding whether to take one of the vaccines or not

For anyone over 60, it should be a simple decision to take the vaccine. They have a 3% chance of dying of Covid - rising to 15% for the very elderly with comorbidities. Even those surviving risk long term disability, particularly lung damage.
Nobody has died from the vaccine.

I know what we have been told, but I’d be surprised if “important people” haven’t had it.

I mean, I'll have it but as a healthy 30 year old I won't be getting it any time soon as it won't be available to me. So I'm not really stressing about who will and won't decide to have it as who knows when we will actually be able to!

Come spring we’ll see a whole raft of politicians with their sleeves rolled up but none of the ones in the UK are old enough to be eligible yet, and I reckon they’ve made the judgement that the political damage of being seen to jump the queue is greater than the benefit of showing that they think it’s safe.

Pence and Biden will have it on TV before Christmas I reckon: as per Fauci. The President is a special class of person in the US in a way that the PM isn’t in the UK. I do wonder why HMQ and DofE haven’t been done publicly though. You’d need to be an absolutely crazed republican to argue that they shouldn’t get it at their ages.

But if your DB is only fifty-something and only diabetic he won’t have to be a guinea pig. Millions and millions of people will have had the vaccine before him. Which is as it should be. I’m absolutely pro-vaccine but there is a risk of rare side effects which haven’t been caught in the trials. That’s definitely definitely not going to outweigh the benefits for your ninety six year old gran with COPD and hypertension, for whom the virus is massively dangerous and whose current isolation is desperately sad.

But it might conceivably outweigh risks for a perfectly healthy twenty-something woman. So you vaccinate the millions of vulnerable first and by the time you’ve got to perfectly healthy twenty somethings you have tens of millions of previous guinea pigs.

Lots of people have asked me if I will have the vaccine, I reply why wouldn’t you want to have something that will help prevent you becoming seriously ill and maybe even die from covid. Also why would you want to have to stay in self isolation one day longer than you have to.

I find it a kick in the teeth tbh for someone ECV to decline the vaccine. The whole country has been turned upside down for almost a year just to protect them.
We don't know if the vaccine stops transmission or not, if it doesn't the virus will still be circulating maybe even more when SD is relaxed so they'll be at even more risk than now. The mind boggles

@3littlewords this is how I feel but I fear being flamed a monster for voicing it. We have to protect the ECV. I am NOT one who believed they should shield while we all did as we pleased.
We locked down the country, we paused education, many have had healthcare stalled or stopped etc etc etc. Huge sacrifices. Now there’s is a development where something else can protect this demographic and it makes me angry hearing my relative say they will reject it for that reason.

Why do people keep stating as fact that the vaccine does not prevent transmission? We do not know this yet, the trails have not been able to tell us either way.

Also, I don't know which vaccine they will be offered there, but the Pfizer one has not been proven to prevent transmission yet (so even if your brother got vaccinated, it is not known whether he could still pass it on to your father

This. 10000 times.

I hear ya, @Bimbleboo . Some people are just supremely selfish. Especially when they are gleefully waiting for others to go first. These are not legitimate anti-vaxxers but arses who should have their photographs displayed in the street or pelted with white feathers.

I saw someone of 85 on the news asking, “What are the long-term effects of the vaccine for me?” Stupid, stupid, selfish woman talk about self-love...

Ridiculous. Luckily my dad is still all for.

At 77 he quite rightly said “What have I got to lose?”

He's free to make his own decisions and of course he will have to live with the consequences of those decisions
Make sure the consequences fall on him