Vaccines for travel fatigue

[Lostinacloud]

Does anybody else feel very down about the world slowly closing down to adults and children who haven’t been vaccinated or who haven’t had the latest booster?

Judging by case numbers everywhere, the fact vaccines don’t really appear to stop spread or last much longer than a few months, coupled with the recent border closures and mandatory pcr and isolation travel changes in response to omnicron, (regardless of vaccination status) the fact someone is vaccinated doesn’t seem to hold much weight in the argument that a vaccinated person has more freedom to travel.

I sincerely hope all this is fairly temporary but where does this situation leave a whole heap of people if not?

Those who had bad reactions to previous vaccines and don’t want another one but aren’t entitled to exemption which seems to be harder to get than hen’s teeth.
Those who have had covid and survived and know they are no threat to hospital space and don’t really like the idea of endless vaccines
Those who have severe needle phobias
Those who choose not to vaccinate their healthy teens or children.
Those who simply choose not to take the offer of vaccination for whatever their personal reason.

All of the above (or perhaps most) could take a test and ensure they are negative before travelling but slowly and surely countries are closing off to non vaccinated travellers and this is now starting to include over 12’s. I’m sure once the full rollout of 5-11 year olds has had time, these entry rules will apply to them too. Where does that leave family holidays, trips to visit relatives, school ski trips or school overseas experiences?

The whole thing doesn’t make scientific sense anymore now that we know what we know about vaccine effectiveness and yet it continues to become more and more likely that only the vaccinated, or in fact recently boosted, will be able to travel.

Will the majority of people ever consider this wrong or will everyone just keep getting vaccinated and vaccinating their whole families no matter what the risk or personal benefit just so they can travel?

It's a virus that spreads when people mix. It seems sensible to me that people avoid travelling all over the place at a time when numbers are continuing to increase, vaccinated or not. Europe is already in a very different situation to the summer.

Well, countries are fairly independently trying to look after their citizens, keep vulnerable people alive, avoid new variants crossing their borders or at least delay the impact of this. There are all sorts of health and economic implications to this.

Some countries also have more vulnerable populations for economic or historical reasons.

Vaccines don't stop spread completely, but they do reduce spread, they reduce hospitalisations, they reduce severe infections (and so mean that there are fewer people with long term health conditions caused by covid). They have saved about half a million lives in Europe - so far.

So I'd say they are worth having, and I can understand why other countries are being careful about travel arrangements.

Vaccination, and travel, of course remains a choice.

I feel sorrier for people from countries who don;t have enough vaccines, and have not been offered even their second doses, and have therefore been barred from seeing families in other countries because rich countries are hoarding vaccines.

Sorry, but I’m happy with it. This is increasingly about unvaccinated occupying hospital beds. When they get full then action has to be taken.

Vaccinated people get a less severe reaction so might not need hospital.

It’s the unvaccinated causing lock downs in Europe.

Travelling isn't a right. You have always had to meet the conditions of entry. If you aren't willing or able to meet them then don't go. I've just been to Spain and it was easy enough to fill in the forms and they required vaccination, no vaccine no flying

It's your choice to not get vaccinated. It is their choice if you are then welcome or not.

Both decisions have consequences. Choose the one that you want.

I add that vaccines might not prevent transmission, although even at six months, they're still pretty good at preventing hospitalization.

Saying this does not make scientific sense is completely misleading. These policies do make scientific sense. Vaccines do prevent severe COVID to a large extent and may reduce transmission a bit.

Couldn't agree more. When is this all going to end? Are people just going to keep getting vaccines injected into them every 6 months, even although you can still get ill from this virus? What happened to encouraging people to boost their immune systems by eating properly and exercising? Is no-one supposed to take responsibility for their own health now? Just let the Government tell you what to do. Because they can be trusted.....

So everyone here so far is happy to get vaccinated every 3-6 months and their children too, regardless of the risk of side effects to young children we don’t even know about yet just so they can travel?

And no it really isn’t the unvaccinated taking up all the hospital beds and causing high cases in many countries. There are multiple examples of extremely highly vaccinated countries or regions where cases are at record highs, or were recently - Israel, Cyprus, Gibraltar, England, Ireland to name but a few.

This recent analysis of Northern Ireland hospital admissions demonstrates that hospitalisations are near enough equal between unvaccinated or vaccinated patients and in older groups vaccinated patients make up the vast majority.

Negative tests I could understand, just vaccinated I just can’t.

It’s the unvaccinated that are occupying the ICU beds

Link here

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-59405471

Loads of links saying the same thing. In my city 15% vaccinated occupying ICU beds. 85% not vaccinated.

Why should people who choose not to have the vaccine get special treatment. Look at how much trouble they’re causing in the health system

Why would any country want to import that into their over stretched systems?

Also you cannot depend on testing. Incubation period varies a lot. You could test negative, take a flight and then test positive when you land or days later.

@Lostinacloud please stop spreading anti-vaxxer lies. Posting a table with total numbers of vaccinated vs unvaccinated is incredibly misleading when you have a population that is >90% vaccinated. You would need to show these values as a percentage of the total vaccinated vs unvaccinated populations to use this as evidence that vaccines do not work (but you won't do that because that fails to match your worldview).

This is a completely scientifically illiterate interpretation of epidemiological data.

[quote TheWhalrus]@Lostinacloud please stop spreading anti-vaxxer lies. Posting a table with total numbers of vaccinated vs unvaccinated is incredibly misleading when you have a population that is >90% vaccinated. You would need to show these values as a percentage of the total vaccinated vs unvaccinated populations to use this as evidence that vaccines do not work (but you won't do that because that fails to match your worldview).

This is a completely scientifically illiterate interpretation of epidemiological data.[/quote]
This.

I fail to see why British travellers who have easy access to the jab should be allowed to travel to countries where very few have access to the jab and overwhelm them. A case in point: Nepal, where the health system was overwhelmed by Covid spread by Everest climbers earlier this year.

@Lostinacloud I agree with you 100%

We’re in a MN minority though, based on comments on my thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4414733-Government-booster-policy-invalidating-travel-insurance-AIBU

It’s really depressing.

But why should it be ok for you to go abroad, infect people there and then clog up the countries health system?🤷🏼‍♀️

Why would any reasonable country want that?

How about this news then? Will this help support my argument?
Calling me an anti-vaxxer was to be expected since I know I am going against the grain here and actually contesting BBC science news and government policy but the data and facts are available for all to see and being vaccinated is not a reason to be allowed to travel freely when it is not a guarantee that you won’t be also carrying Covid. It is this point that I’m trying to make so I won’t get pulled into arguments about who is filling up hospitals.

As I said earlier, testing I can understand, vaccine pass enabled travel just doesn’t make any common sense.

You are ignoring that vaccinated are less likely to spread covid and also far less likely to be hospitalised.

You’ve interpreted those statistics about vaccinated vs unvaccinated completely incorrectly.

Another reason to listen to the experts who understand statistics!

Not that you will given your anti vax stance and ‘long term side effects’ spiel that has been explained countless times.

I agree with you too @Lostinacloud

Crazy accusations at you because you dare to ask questions

Cases are riding in Portugal but hospitalizations
aren’t.

I guess so many workers are ill that they have to have some
mitigation to protect the infra structure.

You may not want to get into a debate over hospital beds but other countries rightly di not want their systems overwhelmed so they have to consider it.

I travelled overseas recently. I am double vaxxed, did 3 PCRs and a 7 day quarantine. Happy to do that so I don't carry Delta to a less developed country with no NHS.I hope it won't be for ever. But this is the way it has to be now.

Austria has mandated the vaccine and it looks like Germany may follow.

Why would they want an unvaccinated person visiting?

I’m happy to have whatever vaccine as long as I can travel, because I live in a different country to my family and so it’s very important to me for my mental well-being and isn’t just about holidays.

I AM concerned about the lack of consensus between the main travel destinations. EG, France will not accept vaccine passports older than 7 months old - in my host country I had an early vaccine (key worker) but am nowhere near the age group currently getting a booster. I’m worried I will be banned from other countries when I’m happy to be vaccinated as much as it takes but it isn’t my turn yet.

@Lostinacloud: no this does not support your argument. This tells us that Portugal is having a substantial number of COVID cases, to the point that restrictions are being imposed. What this doesn't tell us is how many cases there would have been without vaccines.

Another way to look at this (because we're clearly not going to agree from a vaccine effectiveness standpoint): why would so many other countries impose so many more restrictions on unvaccinated travellers than vaccinated ones? (even though all of these countries need the money that tourists bring to their economies).

Answer: because vaccinated travellers are much less likely to have COVID. They're not making life difficult for the unvaccinated just for the sake of it, you know.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

But why should it be ok for you to go abroad, infect people there and then clog up the countries health system?🤷🏼‍♀️

Why would any reasonable country want that?

You are implying that all unvaccinated people are walking around infected.

This is misinformation.