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Covid

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Why are the deaths from covid more tragic than the deaths from blood clots via the vaccine?

54 replies

Queenofclubs · 28/05/2021 12:14

Can someone help to explain this to me?

So, at one point, just one death from covid was one too many, even if it was somebody over 80. Now some young people are dying from blood clots due to the vaccine, like that female news reporter. And people seem to shrug their shoulders and say things like “It’s for the greater good. I hope it doesn’t put YOU off having your vaccine”
The whole thing is utterly insulting and completely bizarre.

OP posts:
TempsPerdu · 28/05/2021 13:35

I also think that what people say - ie the acceptable parameters of public debate - and what they privately think are sometimes quite different.

Case in point: Close friend lives in a different city that’s significantly behind mine in their vaccine rollout. We’ve both just turned 40. She was much more impatient than me to have the vaccine, kept trying to queue jump by ringing her GP and professed she was jealous when I was called for mine ahead of her. Was also highly critical when I expressed my slight reservations about the AZ vaccine specifically - apparently I was being precious and worrying unnecessarily.

A month or so later she’s finally called for her own jab. She moves heaven and earth, harassing her GP, ringing numerous vaccine centres, interrogating her local friends about which vaccine they’d had etc, to avoid having the AZ. Spends a fortnight fretting about it (on the pretext of worries about potentially bad side effects making it difficult to look after her young DC) then drives over 50 miles to the nearest centre that’s offering the Pfizer to over 40s. Turns out her whole extended family managed to dodge the AZ for various reasons and I doubt she ever had any intention of taking it.

TruelyStruttingHotpants · 28/05/2021 14:01

All losses are tragic for loved ones. Whether covid, vaccine related, other medication related, traffic accident, cancer, tripped over putting on your trousers (It is a real fatality statistic!) or something else. We do as a society because hardened to some deaths. However families don't.

BogRollBOGOF · 28/05/2021 14:04

Deaths from Covid have often been treated as more tragic than any other cause. There have also been deaths connnected to the Covid response/ lockdowns and now vaccination. With Covid mainly being a threat to elderly and people in poor health, across the next 5 years it's largely a numbers game distorting who died in what order with a comparatively low proportion of people dying very prematurely. Either way, it's still a personal loss to their loved ones, as are all deaths.

At 40, I've accepted the vaccines because they are producing good results in reducing transmission and complex/ severe cases. I wasn't particularly concerned about my personal Covid risk, any more than I would worry about the rare chance of flu complications. It's 6 of one, half a dozen of another. The vaccine is more controlled in terms of timing (a bit like gambling ELCS vs labour)

On a personal level, it is tragic that there are cases where young, healthy people have died from the vaccine that would also have been unlikely to have died from the illness itself. On an impersonal societal level, there is a numbers game where someone is the rare 1:100,000. Life is a series of playing the odds of survival. Sometimes like with this, we notice, most of the time we don't.

This is why bodily autonomy and consent is important. There can be consequences and it's wrong to force that on to people, and there needs to be space for people to say "not yet, watch this space" as more is learned about the vaccines and potential to modify them.

The post that OP alluded to was one of a series of posts that stank strongly of troll last night. Treating unlikely premature deaths as collatoral damage and martyrs to avoid other deaths is deeply distasteful.

DdraigGoch · 28/05/2021 14:13

The government's allocation of different vaccines has been based upon the balance of risk. On the one side, you have the risk of covid death. On the other side, you have the risk of vaccine death. In the age groups where the covid risk is so small in non-CV patients that it is less than the tiny risk from a particular vaccine, the government have specified a different vaccine.

I trust the experts.

Signed an under-30 year old who got their second AZ dose two days ago.

MareofBeasttown · 28/05/2021 14:24

@ddraigGoch The worst thing you can say on MN is that you trust the experts.:) Someone will shortly be along to tell you to do your own research- bcos your experience is equal to Sarah Gilbert's- and not be a sheep!

looptheloopinahulahoop · 28/05/2021 14:53

@Queenofclubs

Please explain .... because the general consensus is that deaths caused by the vaccine are acceptable, because people should ‘take one for the team’. Or some similar sickening logic.
I think you have a point OP - and it's certainly the case with childhood vaccinations that we are told that we should simply ignore the risks of side effects because of our so-called social duty. However any parent of a child with additional needs will tell you that the social contract soon dries up when you are trying to get your child help, and it's no different if the needs come from vaccine damage.

However, in this case I think the risks of covid and more particularly long covid, far outweigh the risks of the vaccine. I'm not having it for the greater good or taking one for the team, I am having it for my benefit and I don't really care if the more sanctimonious MNers think I am "selfish".

amicissimma · 29/05/2021 00:29

Did you join Mumsnet just to question the use of vaccines, or did you namechange just for this thread? If the latter, why?

Dustyboots · 29/05/2021 00:34

Good question Op.

Why are people at a loss as to where to start with it?

I'm at a loss as to understand why some posters are at that loss ...

Larkstongues · 29/05/2021 08:09

The phrase greater good makes me shudder.
It absolutely offends me on a visceral level.

I will not be doing anything for the greater good. Including taking this rushed out vaccine.

You are right, OP. It's f*ing disgusting that people have this attitude that dying for the greater good is somehow noble.

Nerdygirl · 29/05/2021 08:16

I agree OP. I am shocked by how accepting of injuries and deaths by vaccines are. The number of side effects is unprecedented and whilst you may say this is because of the volume and the short time frame. This is when it’s compared to vaccines that have been given to millions over a number of years

The fact is and this is reinforced btw if you phone 111 is that covid is a mild illness for many . Those that get very ill or die have an average age of over 82. We are significantly under the 5 year average death rate and even more so when you look at the last 29 years.

These vaccines may have been tested but they haven’t completed trials. This is also a fact. And no one can know they are completely safe without long term studies, yes they appear safe but one of the reason trials go on for a number of years is to check there is no long term damage.

Very sad about this presenter

FourWordsImMuNiTy · 29/05/2021 08:21

As an older woman I’ve I’ve just happily had my second AZ, but I do think MNers are too dismissive of this issue and vaccine side-effects in general because of an effort to distance themselves from the appalling anti-vaxxers.

It’s why I was always sceptical about the “vaccinate the teachers!” narrative. It always presented a possibility that a group young healthy women at very little risk from the virus would fall foul of complications too rare to be spotted in the trials. Thank god nobody listened.

The trials were good enough to demonstrate the benefit of the vaccines to high risk people, but not big enough to show benefit to low risk people in a low risk environment - only a larger rollout could do that, with each risk cohort effectively (and reasonably) acting as test subjects for the benefit of the cohort below.

Leaveitonthefloordrobe · 29/05/2021 08:30

If they were to log vaccine deaths as they do covid deaths i.e. death for any reason within 28 days of having the vaccine, the numbers would of course be higher. I'm not saying they should record them that way, but the stats have always been skewed. Many who didn't die from covid were recorded as a covid death (and vice versa of course).

FourWordsImMuNiTy · 29/05/2021 08:48

The “deaths from any caused within 28 days of a Covid test” measure has always been flawed and known to be so, but it has the virtue of speed and in the context of an active pandemic that virtue genuinely outweighs its flaws to make it a vital tool.

But of course for longer term use we can use death certificates which give the cause of death in the professional opinion of the attending doctor, and also excess deaths numbers which served a useful role in the early part of the pandemic where Covid deaths were underreported and now shows us indirect deaths (and the deaths from other causes prevented by lockdown).

PlanetOfTheApesLives · 29/05/2021 08:55

@Mintjulia

Op, the point is that covid has killed at least 127,000 people in the U.K. and only about three quarters of the population has antibodies so far.

50 million people have had a vaccine with 41 deaths.

So risk from covid -127,000 deaths out of 67 million
Risk from vaccine - 41 deaths out of 50million.

No death is more tragic than another. Just that the vaccine is infinitely safer than the disease.

This.

Even more large numbers would die of covid without the vaccine

RedcurrantPuff · 29/05/2021 08:59

If you think we had these restrictions for the past 15 months because “one death of an over 80 from Covid is one too many” I expect you’ve missed the point.

You can’t have failed to notice 120k plus deaths from Covid? Its the NUMBERS at a population level which make Covid worse than the vaccine side effects.

But I expect you know this full well and are shit stirring.

Bluntness100 · 29/05/2021 09:01

Op are you scared to get the vaccine? Is that what’s behind this?

Mischance · 29/05/2021 09:02

Who has said that deaths from clots are not tragic too? No-one as far as I know. Of course they are tragic.

We have to assess the balance of risk in this imperfect risky world.

newnortherner111 · 29/05/2021 09:11

Very few people have died from the impacts of the vaccines. In that time more people will have died in road crashes, the majority of which are preventable. All are sad losses.

@Mintjulia thank you for providing the figures.

Thunderdonkey · 29/05/2021 09:26

I think one problem we have is that you can't quantify the lives saved by the vaccine. There are thousands of people now alive because they had the vaccine and didn't get seriously ill with Covid but we have no idea who. There won't be any headlines saying Jo Bloggs is alive because of the vaccine, so all the focus is on who's died.

partyatthepalace · 29/05/2021 09:41

No - the point is, if everyone has the vaccine the deaths will be dramatically fewer than if COVID is allowed to run rampant.

People are accepting that the vaccine will cause some deaths and some serious side effects because the alternatives is very much worse.

I really hope you were only pretending you didn’t understand that.

Toty · 29/05/2021 09:43

You can’t have failed to notice 120k plus deaths from Covid? Its the NUMBERS at a population level which make Covid worse than the vaccine side effects.

You seem to have failed to notice that 120k died WITH covid, covid wasn't necessarily the cause of death, huge difference. Plus average age of death from Covid is what, 82? Higher than life expectancy, many of those people would have succumbed to flu or something else if covid didn't exist. Average age of death from vaccine related clots is 46.The numbers aren't important. It's only because there were so many ill at the same time that it became a problem. Thousands of people die every day in the UK from something. The vaccines aren't about protecting individuals, they're about protecting the economy.

MissTrip82 · 29/05/2021 09:44

I’ve taken care of people who’ve died from both. I’ve heard no one, not a soul, express the abhorrent views you think are the ‘consensus’.

NeedNewKnees · 29/05/2021 09:44

What on earth are you on about? Death from either cause is equally tragic.

knittingaddict · 29/05/2021 09:45

@DdraigGoch

The government's allocation of different vaccines has been based upon the balance of risk. On the one side, you have the risk of covid death. On the other side, you have the risk of vaccine death. In the age groups where the covid risk is so small in non-CV patients that it is less than the tiny risk from a particular vaccine, the government have specified a different vaccine.

I trust the experts.

Signed an under-30 year old who got their second AZ dose two days ago.

I feel the same way and have had both jabs now. Both of my daughters in their 30's have either had one dose or have theirs booked.

If I'm honest I would rather die from the cure than the disease. I would rather know that I had done everything I could to protect myself and those around me. I do think the risk from the vaccine is tiny though and I'm not at all worried.

NicknamesAreLikeKleenex · 29/05/2021 09:55

Yes you’re right Tory, that 120,000 figure (now 127,000 actually refers to people who died of any cause within 28 days of a positive Covid test which is a fast measure but not very precise. For a more personalised and accurate measure you need to look at people with Covid listed as a cause of death on the death certificate by the attending doctor, which is 152,000.

Why are the deaths from covid more tragic than the deaths from blood clots via the vaccine?