To think you wouldn’t get vaccinated if you knew your risk from covid was low

[Coveed]

Just imagine for a moment there was a calculator that could predict your risk of getting seriously ill or dying from covid. If it turned out you were low risk would you still follow all the advice such as socially distancing and getting vaccinated?

YABU - yes I would still follow the rules and advice even if I were low risk
YANBU - no I wouldn’t endure the hardship of not seeing friends/family and I wouldn’t bother with getting vaccinated as my risk of becoming unwell would be low.

So@Coveed, be honest, why did you name change for this post?

@Changechangychange

medieval pheasant believing in witchcraft, as someone said

I’m not sure if that was an autocorrect fail, but that is hilarious.

Oops.

How can you know though until you get it? How can you know you don't have variant ganetics that mean you'd react better/worse that someone else? How can you know whether your immune system is either naturally not very good at fighting this particular virus or a bit weak at the time you catch covid due to being run down or whatever? How can you know whether a new variant will make you much more ill? How can you know whether a subsequent covid infection will be much worse than the mild one you had last time? I'd always take the vaccine, however young/low risk I was, just to get some antibodies ready in advance to give myself the best fighting chance, as there are just too many unknowns (and unknowables).

Why are people still stating that the vaccine doesn't do anything to stop transmission?

All the recent, and growing, evidence is pointing very much towards the fact that it can have a big impact of reducing transmission.

I'm also really happy to continue:

Not having people stand right behind me in a queue breathing down my neck
Not having to shake blokes hands at work that may have just come out of the toilet and not washed their hands
Continuing to wear a mask on public transport and not being coughed and sneezed on all winter
Not having to walk right behind people smoking as vaping and blowing the contents of their lungs out into a great cloud that I then have to walk through.

Because all of those things are gross and used to really fucking annoy me, as a commuter.

I'm also happy to continue having the flu jab each winter, as I already did (paid for, as no underlying health conditions) as I'm self employed and lose a lot of money if I have to spend a week in bed, and will be more than happy to have an annual covid vaccine for the same reason.

I'm also hoping that the improved population hand hygiene will continueas, as any commuter will tell you, it was really poor before.

Yes - as others have said, it's not just about you. Or, if you're only interested in you, it's sometimes only when it's too late you find out you have an underlying condition that could make you higher risk than you realise.

@Abraxan

Why are people still stating that the vaccine doesn't do anything to stop transmission?

All the recent, and growing, evidence is pointing very much towards the fact that it can have a big impact of reducing transmission.

Yes I’m wondering this too. For weeks, multiple news sources have been reporting that there in increasing evidence that vaccines are resulting in a substantial drop in transmission. I sometimes wonder if people just read the news one every couple of months!

@Abraxan

Why are people still stating that the vaccine doesn't do anything to stop transmission?

All the recent, and growing, evidence is pointing very much towards the fact that it can have a big impact of reducing transmission.

Because that's still the official line. It isn't definitive enough yet to say otherwise.

Yabu because it's not just about me 🙄🙄

Because that's still the official line. It isn't definitive enough yet to say otherwise

The official line has never been that it doesn’t prevent transmission, just that they don’t have sufficient evidence yet to be able to state that it does.
A lot of people on here are stating very definitively that it doesn’t prevent transmission, which is misleading.

Of course it bloody is!

Would you rather stand next to someone who's not wearing a mask and has covid with no respiratory symptoms, or someone not wearing a mask, who has bad covid, and it coughing, wheezing, sneezing and lspluttering into the air next to you.

Would you rather open a door just touched by the first person, who has asymptomatic, mild covid, due to being vaccinated and having existing antibodies that are mounting a strong defence before it can take hold, or the second unvaccinated person that has just wiped their hand across their snot and dribble covered face and sneezed at you as they go past, because they are having to wait for their body to develop an immune response to covid and so have noticeable, increasing covid symptoms which are evolutionarily designed, over billions of years, specifically to spread the virus into new hosts.

Which person, person A or B, is more likely to transmit covid do we think?

Because that's still the official line. It isn't definitive enough yet to say otherwise.

I don't think that was the official line - the official line was that there was no evidence to say that it stopped transmission, not that the vaccine doesn't do anything to stop transmission. It was always expected that it would to a reasonable extent.

No.

If I KNOW I have a contagious illness, I will distance from others to protect them.

But otherwise I don't exist to martyr my personal freedoms and liberties (such as seeing my own family and working) to protect other from a virus I don't even know I have unless tested.

@faerin

No.

If I KNOW I have a contagious illness, I will distance from others to protect them.

But otherwise I don't exist to martyr my personal freedoms and liberties (such as seeing my own family and working) to protect other from a virus I don't even know I have unless tested.

You don't always know tho. So you could be infectious and carrying to your family and friends

Yes of course I bloody would. Even if I was a selfish twat I still would because I don’t get normal life back until we’re all ready for it...

This whole thread ignores some of the risks that people think about when weighing up catching covid Vs vaccine.

On an individual level

1)Yes there's a risk of hospitalisations / death
2) there's a good chance of suffering from fatigue even in mild cases judging by myself and colleagues
3) there's a risk of more debilitating symptoms a la long covid.

4) if you are a zero hours worker or only get SSP there's serious financial loss from having to isolate or if you get long covid
5) we know that covid can damage other organs other than the lungs and the long term effects are unknown or undetermined.

On a family and community

There's a a risk of transmitting disease to older relatives or any relatives who may then suffer these effects above. This also applies to all people in your community.

I'm not sure it is entirely rational not to trade the above for a vaccine which has a few days symptoms at worst given the uncertainties above especially as whilst age, comorbidities etc might be useful at a population level there is a lot of randomness and unpredictability in symptoms severity etc on an individual level

@Thimbleberries

Because that's still the official line. It isn't definitive enough yet to say otherwise.

I don't think that was the official line - the official line was that there was no evidence to say that it stopped transmission, not that the vaccine doesn't do anything to stop transmission. It was always expected that it would to a reasonable extent.

Apologies, yes, you're right, it is that there's no evidence that it reduces or stops exposure.

I just meant that whilst it is pointing towards saying that it does reduce transmission, that can't be said as its not definitive yet.

If that makes sense?

I would absolutely have it even if the risk to me was low.

I’d be worried about my friends and family.

I’d be worried about it mutating into something that could increase my risk.
I’d be worried about not being able to work in certain fields or travel to certain destinations
I’d be worried I had some underlying condition that made me vulnerable that I wasn’t aware of yet
No brainer for me

I am very curious to know who @Coveed actually is.

Journalist, attached to government in some way? Clearly this is research of some sort.

@Dustyboots I’m not a journalist, or part of government or affiliated to any political party. Obviously I’m not going to put personal identifying details on this thread, but I am a researcher - although my area of research is very niche and has absolutely nothing to do with COVID. I am asking this question because I have recently read quite a lot about how public perception of COVID has evolved and I find it incredibly interesting.

Oh. Ok. Thanks @Coveed for letting us know.

I would 100% still get vaccinated.

To protect the people who can't and to make my chances even lower.

Okay but I ask again @Coveed why did you change your username to start this thread?

[quote Coveed]@Dustyboots I’m not a journalist, or part of government or affiliated to any political party. Obviously I’m not going to put personal identifying details on this thread, but I am a researcher - although my area of research is very niche and has absolutely nothing to do with COVID. I am asking this question because I have recently read quite a lot about how public perception of COVID has evolved and I find it incredibly interesting.[/quote]
I can't see how you would get an equal response from all sides. As I think if People came on and said I'm not getting it because xyz. They would get ripped apart. So they read but don't comment.

@DumplingsAndStew - how do you know I’ve changed my username? Are you a moderator- in which case you should not be telling everyone that I’ve changed my user username?!

I changed it for the same reason as others, and the same reason I’ve changed it before - I don’t want people searching through my posts and finding out personal identifying information eg) what my interests are, where I live, how many kids I have, or even how my husband annoyed me when he didn’t clean the poop off the toilet seat.

But really, I’m very interested to know how you would know that I’ve changed my username? Do you have access to my username history some how?