Can we please stop saying the vaccine does not reduce transmission?

[Frequentflier]

It does. Plenty of evidence now out which everyone can find for themselves. edition.cnn.com/2021/03/29/health/pfizer-and-moderna-covid-19-vaccines-work-wellness/index.html

It is up to you to not take the vaccine if you don't want to. But please stop dressing it up as an unselfish choice if you have no conditions that stop you from taking it.

AZ statement that the risk of blood clots is higher in unvaccinated people than vaccinated is true.

Yes but the AZ statement was specifically in response to the halt - and it wasn't halted for blood clots, it was halted while they investigated what is being called VIPIT.

So it made people think (and repeat, repeatedly on threads all over MN) that the occurrence of "VIPIT" was lower than in the general population, which is false.

I agree with what you are saying below that as it's similar to what I've read, my problem is that isn't what AZ are saying and the last I checked it was not what the UK Gov were saying either. There is a whole other thread about that, though.

The advice for those with a history of most clotting disorders is to get vaccinated because the risk from Covid is much higher than the risk from any vaccine. COVID infection is very pro thrombotic hence Covid toes.

Brain blood clots covers a lot. It's a very specific thing cavernous sinus thrombosis that might be associated with this VIPIT thing. I think if I had a family history of CSVT or heparin induced thrombocytopenia specifically I would ask to get Pfizer or would not be vaccinated if it was any other clotting disorder I would have any vaccine.
Do talk to your GP though if you have a specific concern.

Thanks CovoidOfAllHumanity

A genuine question, the vaccine was designed to reduce symptoms not to prevent people catching covid. This is what it was designed to do as far as I understand it, so the fact that it also seems to reduce transmission surely implies that it’s symptoms (coughing etc?) that spreads the virus? Yet they’ve been saying asymptomatic people spread it which is why we’ve had all the isolation rules etc as you might not realise you have it.

I’m sure that’s very simplistic but I’m just curious how a vaccine designed to reduce symptoms actually prevent transmission if symptoms and transmission aren’t linked? Anyone know or have links to the science behind it all?

@TheDailyCarbunkle

I find it interesting how not taking a vaccine is considered a 'selfish' choice, when shutting down the entire economy, forcing people out of work, denying children education, creating a budget deficit that will haunt our children for their entire lives, destroying careers and livelihoods in a way that massively impacts younger people, ie the people in the least amount of danger from covid, is considered - what - unselfish?

It is unbelievable to me that people are expected to sacrifice and sacrifice and sacrifice to extent of taking a medication that they personally don't need and may have unknown side effects that have long term health consequences, and people are genuinely calling them selfish for not wanting to do that.

What the fuck is wrong with people???

@TheDailyCarbunkle I couldn't have said it better.

@Frequentflier

It does. Plenty of evidence now out which everyone can find for themselves. edition.cnn.com/2021/03/29/health/pfizer-and-moderna-covid-19-vaccines-work-wellness/index.html

It is up to you to not take the vaccine if you don't want to. But please stop dressing it up as an unselfish choice if you have no conditions that stop you from taking it.

All the vaccine 'reduce' transmission but importantly a true vaccine would stop it, otherwise it's not really a vaccine. It would 'kill' it and 'stop' transmission 100%. No current offering does this so technically 'are they really vaccines'? The other argument 'is it really a 'virus'? My friend who majored in biology said it's questionable. I find it all very interesting. Sadly I will always have more questions than anyone can ever give me answers for.

"There are people who believe that their risk from the vaccine is greater than their risk from covid. It's not based on fact, but on feeling."

CappucinoCounter - Your post is rather patronising in tone, I must say, but more importantly it is blatantly erroneous. Firstly, the side effect profile of the biological compounds is turning out to be quite different. The number of Yellow Cards that have been registered for AZN in the UK is approaching 80,000 whilst Pfizer is closer to 40,000 as per the MHRA report of last week, 25th March (look it up if you need to). Secondly the Pfizer and AZN compounds have produced notably different side effect profiles, with AZN having experience over 60,000 events involving the nervous system, for example, whilst PFE has only registered 20,000. Either way these are significant numbers in the context of 26mln doses administered between the two of them up until March 14th. This brings us on to the risks to the population from Covid, which are wildly different by age group (and obesity). For the under-40's, the chance of dying from Covid last year were 0.0001%, that being 1 in 10,000, assuming no pre-existing conditions. Let us compare this to the 864 people who have died shortly after a vaccine according to the MHRA study mentioned above. This is 0.003323%. So we can say that currently the chances of an under 40 dying shortly after a vaccine are higher than their chances of dying of the virus LAST YEAR when the virus was peaking. For older people the risk profile is different for Covid (higher risk) and from the compounds (lower side effects). Consequently, the overall conclusion is that whether you are more at risk from the virus or the biological compounds depends primarily on your age, all other things being equal. Each person must do their own calculations. For the under-20s a calculator should not be required since their risks from Covid is miniscule (20 deaths ex-underlying conditions) whereas the LT effects of the compounds are completely unknown. All the granular data above comes from the MHRA report. The MHRA is a part of the DHSC and can be found on the UK Gov website before anyone cries "fake news".

@beginningoftheend

I agree that the vaccine reduces transmission, but that doesn't mean that we can force or bully people into medical treatment they don't want.

Vaccine refusal based on misinformation is very concerning, but we must not go down the road of attacking individuals.

Many people who have taken the vaccine are selfish in other ways. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that.

Misinformation! The problem is more who exactly decides what is misinformation. If the likes of FB can block factual posts that lead to a government website with valid information as it was 'Fact Checked as FALSE'. We have to admit that we have a serious problem. This does not breed confidence in the Government or the information released by vaccine companies. So people get savvy and start researching for themselves. There are enough medical websites and even the vaccine manufactures websites which give clear information that very few choose to read. Those who do are then labelled tin foil hat crazies because they see information that is not part of the widely released information. Still, it is there for all to see.

Misinformation comes from not allowing a balanced argument and questions from different sources. Hiding information is also misinformation.

Facts will always be facts even if people don't believe then. Science is forever changing dependent on where they choose to channel their resources. This is dictated by many factors, not all of them motivated by what we would imagine them to be. What we have to remember is, the human body, like the universe is complex. Yes we have learned a lot and understand more than ever. However we must respect the we don't know more than we know and one size will never fit all, even though we are all human.

This is a 43 yo Spanish teacher who started having a headache a few hours after getting a shot, the headache didn't stop for 10 days and she died of a massive brain haemorrage. In Germany they found that it was mostly younger (20-60 yo) women who suffered with side effects, out of 31 cases, 29 were women, 9 died. So since I have migraines with aura which only respond to aspirin, I really think I shouldn't have the vaccine as the risk of me having having a blood clot is just too big and it's Vs. having flu like symptoms for a few weeks. After losing a business and still having to pay a huge debt directly caused by the lockdowns, I am not going to risk having a stroke in my early 40-ies so that I lower the risk a bit more for people who are in their 80-ies. Call me selfish but this terrible absurd 'pandemic' has really gone too far already.

www.google.es/amp/s/www.euroweeklynews.com/2021/03/17/investigation-into-death-of-marbella-teacher-following-astrazeneca-vaccine/amp/?client=safari

Update on the Spanish teacher whose death was supposedly caused by the vaccine . An autopsy concluded that it was not. www.euroweeklynews.com/2021/03/19/astrazeneca-vaccine-did-not-cause-the-death-of-marbella-teacher/

Christ on a bike the woman had a subarachnoid haemorrhage due to a congenital berry aneurysm! This is a rare tragic thing but it's nothing new in the world.

That is nothing to do with clotting and nothing to do with the vaccine. The timing is just coincidental.

People have got to stop scare mongering. If millions of people have a vaccine then some of them are going to coincidentally die of things they had anyway.

People have got to stop scare mongering. If millions of people have a vaccine then some of them are going to coincidentally die of things they had anyway.

You keep telling yourself that. I note that you haven't tackled any of the points that I made upthread.

The same scaremongering needs to apply with covid as well with people making out its deadly to all age groups

Different numbers of yellow card reports are easy explained

1. Total basics: Have the same number of doses of each been given? You don't say. If twice the number of doses of AZ were given vs Pfizer then it is simple maths that there would be twice the number of yellow card reports

1. Even if the number of doses is the same Pfizer has largely been given to young healthy healthcare professionals in the U.K. whereas AZ was used for nursing homes and housebound due to the cold storage requirements for Pfizer. If you vaccinate an elderly population you will get more yellow card reports.

You then compare 864 people in ALL age groups dying after a vaccine. NOT due to the vaccine just 'after' it vs the risk of someone under 40 getting COVID

This is quite clearly a stupid comparison as a) you are comparing young people with old people and b) you are comparing people who died from COVID with people who died 'after' a vaccine which did not cause their death.

If the risk of death after being vaccinated did outweigh the risk of dying from COVID after a proper analysis then quite simply the vaccine would not be on the market.

@winched

I think if it had been children, people would have given up so much and more and you wouldn’t have seen these threads where folk blithely spouted it’s okay that Granny X died from Covid, after all she was 70...

I honestly believe the opposite. I think if it had been children, they'd have all been under lockdown / told to shield in the same way the CEV and elderly have been told to shield. Except the "rest of the country" would have gone on to a certain extent. There would likely have been restrictions, masks + SD etc, but I think there would have been a much bigger focus on keeping the economy going.

Also, I don't think it's as black and white as saying "Granny X died but that's okay because she's 70". I think the vast majority of people believe every death is sad, and a tragic loss.

What I sometimes take issue with is the attitude that only covid deaths are a tragic loss. That people are justifying others losing homes and businesses and education and mental health as being worth it, yet the majority have never, ever considered babies dying every 2 minutes of malaria a cause worthy enough to inconvenience ourselves over in the slightest. Most people wouldn't give £10 a month to save malnourished children in third world countries, yet the same people are demanding more and more and more and calling anyone who disagrees, who feels they have given up enough, selfish.

I thought it was interesting on the thread about how we are killing the planet. Plastic in the oceans, climate change, cutting down rainforests, cotton production, on and on. And people were saying there are too many people in the world - we need a plague. Well, we're living through a "mild plague" right now and taking the most extreme measures possible to try to make sure it doesn't kill a single person.

That paragraph above sounds almost sociopathic in how much empathy it lacks when you add emotion into it... but I think it goes to show that it's not always about not caring if granny X dies. Of course granny X dying is a tragedy, anyone dying is sad. But when you step back and take ALL emotion out of the situation, it's more nuanced. When you take emotion out of the situation we can be more factual. This is probably the only time in the long, long history of humans where an average death of 80-85 would be considered tragic. That's just a fact. Yet 83 year old granny dying of a preventable infection is tragic and sad.

Bravo!

So all in all I did not reply to your post previously because of its staggering scientific and statistical ineptitude. I basically did not know where to start on trying to answer calmly and politely thus I thought it best to ignore but if you want an answer then there it is.

I am not a person scaremongering about Covid

If you are under 40 then your chances of death or a bad outcome are very small. I have never said otherwise.

However your chances of a poor outcome from being vaccinated are even smaller.

That is literally the reason that regulatory trials are conducted to ensure that benefits outweigh risks. But of course randomers on Mumsnet are better at stats than the MHRA.

If you are under 40 then you are probably having it for the greater good (Over 40 it's for your own good) and if you can't see any benefit in that then that's your own business no-one is actually forcing you.

I am mid forties. I've had COVID already. I still had my jab. If I was under 40 I'd still have it too. I work in healthcare and my worst fear in this pandemic was not contracting COVID myself but giving it to my patients and then being responsible for their deaths. Honestly I was never that worried about me only about them.

I guess I kind of assumed that a lot of people would feel the same way. All my work colleagues do. I don't know of anyone who declined from people in their twenties up and we'd all had it already too. I have my flu jab every year for the same reason.

I am looking forward to getting the NHS back up and running doing non COVID stuff and staff need to be vaccinated for that to happen so we are not all off sick. Presumably people in other lines of work might feel the same. Just as you get your business open again it'd probably be nice if all the staff didn't then come down with COVID and if you could relax restrictions a bit knowing everyone was safer and you wouldn't be trashing the reputation of your gym or hair salon or whatever by causing a COVID outbreak.

Everyone can and should make their own decision but vaccination does prevent spread as well as serious illness as OP has said and there are benefits to us all including younger people in not having to worry about spreading COVID.

@CovoidOfAllHumanity

I am not a person scaremongering about Covid

If you are under 40 then your chances of death or a bad outcome are very small. I have never said otherwise.

However your chances of a poor outcome from being vaccinated are even smaller.

That is literally the reason that regulatory trials are conducted to ensure that benefits outweigh risks. But of course randomers on Mumsnet are better at stats than the MHRA.

Im not sure if randomers on mumsnet are better than the MHRA but given the Uk has some of the highest death numbers in the world for covid primarily down to the organisation you work for ( NHS) sending thousands of elderly people with covid to die in care homes with do not resuscitate orders it wouldnt surprise me if they did tbh

@CovoidOfAllHumanity

You can put a donut all you want, aspects of the NHS care and decisions made regarding covid have been a fucking disgrace compared to other countries

Did you mistake me for Matt Hancock? I don't run the bloody NHS I just work for it. I am not responsible for Tory government policy.

Also it's a biscuit
Here's another

@CovoidOfAllHumanity

Did you mistake me for Matt Hancock? I don't run the bloody NHS I just work for it. I am not responsible for Tory government policy.

Also it's a biscuit
Here's another

so stop preaching to people using the NHS as a template to knowing what you are talking about. Imagine at your age working for the NHS reverting to childish emojis - no wonder the NHS has been unfit for purpose for the last 20 years ( long before the tories)