For many years I took the flu vaccine in order to protect others near me, not because I was afraid of the flu. If you care about others, those who are not as strong as you, then take the covid-19 vaccine. You will help stopping the pandemic, and you will save lives, by preventing others from getting sick.

On the selfish side, by taking the vaccine, you increase the chance of The Rolling Stones touring again. They can not tour until the pandemic is under control, i.e. they need a HIGH vaccination rate in a country in order to tour.

Bjornulf

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bv
For many years I took the flu vaccine in order to protect others near me, not because I was afraid of the flu. If you care about others, those who are not as strong as you, then take the covid-19 vaccine. You will help stopping the pandemic, and you will save lives, by preventing others from getting sick.

very true!

A side issue that isn't talked about much is that at least in the states getting care for non-COVID issues is tricky at best. I have severe RA & until recently couldn't get in person treatment due to restrictions. Right before Memorial Day weekend I was feeling very ill to the point I had to call for emergency care. Turns out I have some mystery internal bleeding that in turn caused a minor heart attack. I was in the hospital for 5 days for the heart portion of it. I need some nasty tests for the bleeding part & it has taken a month to accomplish that next week as I have to be put under for the tests. All RA treatments have been put on hold until the results come back making getting around a challenge at best. It has been an ugly start to summer & I am praying that the bleeding is not anything too serious. I haven't been able to eat really for the past month. Not to worry, the increased medical bills for things my insurance won't cover are taking up the food part of the monthly budget.

So sorry, crholstrom...hope recovery comes soon for you.

~"Love is Strong"~

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angee
So sorry, crholstrom...hope recovery comes soon for you.

thank you

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LeonidP

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daspyknows
I am doing the same. I will take off the mask if I am with people I know I am vaccinated. Not a big deal wearing it in public at this point. I will wear it on the airplane and in NY. I will wear it at shows too. No big deal.

LOL, you might as well stay isolated, if OTHERS are not wearing the mask that isn't helping you, now is it?

No, I live in an area where 80% of the people are vaccinated. You are not and you are too hung up on your kids hockey game to understand that has no relation to the NFL. Then again, your opinions on this topic prove your ignorance. My recommendation is go hang out with people who are sick with Covid to see if you are immune. Until you do that you will never know.

Yes the chance of an adverse reaction is very low, but this probably isn't going to help convince the hesitant to get vaccinated.
And then there's the long term effects which are still an unknown...

From CNN:

FDA adds a warning to Covid-19 vaccines about risk of heart inflammation

PfizerCorona

CNN)The US Food and Drug Administration added a warning about the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis to fact sheets for Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines Friday. The warning notes that reports of adverse events following vaccination -- particularly after the second dose -- suggest increased risks of both types of heart inflammation. Earlier this week, vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention heard that the agency had received about 1,200 reports of such heart inflammation after 300 million doses of the two vaccines had been given. CDC has confirmed about 300 of those cases, many of them among young men and adolescents. But patients are recovering quickly, Dr. Matthew Oster, a pediatric cardiologist, told the advisers.

The FDA is advising vaccine recipients to seek immediate medical attention if they experience "chest pain, shortness of breath, or feelings of having a fast-beating, fluttering, or pounding heart after vaccination."
"This update follows an extensive review of information and the discussion by CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting on Wednesday," the FDA said. "The data presented at this meeting reinforced the FDA's decision to revise the fact sheets and further informed the specific revisions."

ACIP members agreed there is a likely association between the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines and rare cases of heart inflammation in adolescents and young adults. Almost all the cases resolved with little treatment and patients recovered quickly. The advisers said that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks. The FDA said at the time it would update the fact sheets the reflect the findings. "The data presented at this meeting reinforced the FDA's decision to revise the fact sheets and further informed the specific revisions," the FDA said in a statement. Both the FDA and CDC are monitoring reports of these adverse events and will follow up to assess longer-term outcomes, the FDA noted.

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

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daspyknows
No, I live in an area where 80% of the people are vaccinated. You are not and you are too hung up on your kids hockey game to understand that has no relation to the NFL. Then again, your opinions on this topic prove your ignorance. My recommendation is go hang out with people who are sick with Covid to see if you are immune. Until you do that you will never know.

Are you serious? Maybe you should mingle with the sick and get yourself checked out as well.

When large parts of the world are vaccinated, the virus' symptoms are reduced by immunization and the mutations that can spread are those with more coughing, sneezing, etc. Later when the vaccine effect wears off, you could be facing a much tougher virus.

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skytrench

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daspyknows
No, I live in an area where 80% of the people are vaccinated. You are not and you are too hung up on your kids hockey game to understand that has no relation to the NFL. Then again, your opinions on this topic prove your ignorance. My recommendation is go hang out with people who are sick with Covid to see if you are immune. Until you do that you will never know.

Are you serious? Maybe you should mingle with the sick and get yourself checked out as well.

When large parts of the world are vaccinated, the virus' symptoms are reduced by immunization and the mutations that can spread are those with more coughing, sneezing, etc. Later when the vaccine effect wears off, you could be facing a much tougher virus.

Why would I want to do that? Maybe you should. I am being careful as I have been since I first caught it in March 2020. I have been fully vaccinated. Will get a booster if/when it is available. Not being stupid about it. You are welcome to be. Won't bother me.

The U.S. Government Placed a Big Bet on an Antiviral Pill to Fight COVID-19

We’re not going to vaccinate our way completely out of this pandemic. With epidemiologists around the world increasingly accepting the reality that SARS-CoV-2 and its variants will become endemic viruses—like the seasonal flu—the push is on to develop antiviral medications that can be taken at home to prevent infections from leading to hospitalization and death. Today, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Biden Administration has authorized $3.2 billion to accelerate the development of antivirals already in the R&D pipeline, with the hope that at least one will be ready for release before the end of the year.

“The remarkable and rapid development of vaccines and testing technology has shown how agile scientific discovery can be,” said Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in an HHS statement. “We will leverage these same strengths as we construct a platform for the discovery and development of effective antivirals.”

The plan will focus on 19 drugs currently being investigated for their antiviral potential, with a goal of accelerating their development to Phase 2 clinical trials. Last week, the Administration already placed a major bet on one of the 19, announcing that it will purchase up to 1.7 million doses of an antiviral being produced by Merck, pending emergency use authorization or full approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Of the $3.2 billion being allocated, $1.2 billion is going to fund the creation of what the HHS calls “collaborative drug discovery groups,” hoping that the push to create a COVID-19 treatment will also create a developmental infrastructure for other antivirals to treat other diseases.

The new drugs could not only fill the breach left by the vaccine-hesitant who are slowing the push in the U.S. and around the world to reach herd immunity, they could also serve as a backstop against breakthrough infections—cases of COVID-19 that occur even among the vaccinated. Late last month, for example, the CDC reported more than 10,000 breakthrough vaccinations in 46 states as of the end of April, at a time when just over 100 million vaccines had been administered in the U.S. In Massachusetts alone, there have currently been a total of 4,000 breakthrough infections recorded, reported the Boston Herald today. That’s still a relatively small number—representing just 0.1% of vaccinated people—but does make the new drugs attractive.

“New antivirals that prevent serious COVID-19 illness and death, especially oral drugs that could be taken at home early in the course of disease, would be powerful tools for battling the pandemic and saving lives,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in the HHS announcement.
[time.com]

‘A tough slog’: White House struggles to increase vaccination rates as Delta variant surges

Only about 46 percent of the U.S. population is vaccinated, and the number of doses administered has fallen by almost 300,000 per day since June 7, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hesitancy

Top Biden administration health officials trying to slow the spread of the Covid-19 Delta variant have largely given up on the possibility of reinstating mask and social-distancing rules in favor of a grassroots vaccine education campaign. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House Covid-19 Task Force have discussed whether to press mayors and governors in the Midwest and South, where the highly transmissible Delta variant is spreading quickly, to once again require mask mandates, according to three senior Biden health officials. But the administration ultimately concluded that many people who are not vaccinated are also those who have resisted wearing masks. Instead, the federal government will try to convince hesitant Americans to get vaccinated by working with state officials and trusted community members to communicate the benefits of the shots, the three senior officials said. The president’s team is not confident that the new campaign will change hearts and minds, the two officials said, but it is falling back on old messaging in part because top administration officials are unsure what other tactics will work.

Only about 46 percent of the U.S. population is vaccinated, and the number of doses administered has fallen by almost 300,000 per day since June 7, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The plateauing vaccination rate underscores the extent to which the White House is struggling to find new and better ways to convince Americans to get Covid-19 shots — while much of the rest of the world struggles to secure a steady supply of vaccines. And it raises questions about how the federal government will manage increasing Covid-19 cases associated with the Delta variant in the months ahead, with businesses and schools returning to normal operations. “This is the door-to-door campaign, this is the church-to-church, this is going into the community and meeting people where they are. We’re not going to convince everybody,” said Scott Becker, CEO of the Association of Public Health Laboratories. “The Delta variant and its explosive growth — I wish there was a better way to articulate the damage that it is doing and will do in those communities, but it is going to be a tough slog.”

New Covid-19 infections have increased by more than 50 percent over the last two weeks in under-vaccinated states such as Missouri and Oklahoma. Many of the cases are tied to the Delta variant, which the CDC says now accounts for one-fifth of new infections nationwide. “Based on the data that we have right now, the Delta variant is more transmissible than Alpha,” the strain that has predominated in the U.S. this spring, said Summer Galloway, a senior adviser at the agency. Preliminary data from the U.K. suggests that unvaccinated people infected with the Delta variant have an increased risk of hospitalization, she added. The CDC is studying whether the variant leads to more severe infections in undervaccinated communities. But there is good news: recent data shows the Pfizer vaccine is nearly 90 percent effective against Delta, making vaccination one of the most effective ways to stop the variant’s march across the U.S. “We really just want to encourage everyone … to get vaccinated. What we don't want to have happen is we have a significant proportion of the population that's unvaccinated and you see an increase in the number of cases and the number of hospitalizations, the number of deaths,” Galloway said. “It could lead to another surge.” In the meantime, the CDC is still encouraging people who are unvaccinated to wear masks and avoid crowded indoor gatherings, an agency spokesperson said.

The number of U.S. adults who say they will definitely not take a Covid-19 vaccine has remained steady at 13 percent, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey released last month. Twelve percent say they are waiting to decide if they will get vaccinated, while 7 percent say they will only opt for immunization if it is required for work or other activities. The Biden administration in March rolled out a $1 billion advertising campaign, relying on radio and television spots to educate Americans on the benefits of vaccination and on where and when they could receive the shot. The administration partnered with 275 groups, including the Christian Broadcasting Network and Nascar, to reach areas where hesitancy or outright opposition to the vaccines is high. The federal government has also joined up with the Ad Council — a nonprofit organization that often partners with the federal government on public service announcements — and the Covid Collaborative, a group of organizations working together to combat the virus, on ads promoting Covid-19 vaccines. The CDC Vaccine Task Force is also offering “vaccine confidence consultations” to interested jurisdictions. The consultations include briefings between CDC officials and local leaders about how states can build trust in their communities around vaccination. The three senior Biden health officials said the administration is pushing more of the responsibility of convincing the unvaccinated to get the jab to local officials, who can tap trusted community leaders to spread the word. The hope is that those local leaders will be more effective messengers than national ad campaigns or top federal officials.

Over the last two weeks, officials from the CDC, HHS and the White House Covid-19 Task Force have formulated a plan to work with local officials, including mayors, to knock on doors in areas with low vaccination rates to talk with people about signing up for the shot. Officials like President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky also are increasing their appearances on national TV programs and with local press in the South where the Delta variant is spreading. Fauci, for instance, has visited vaccine sites in New York and Florida this month with First Lady Jill Biden. He spent the Juneteenth holiday going door-to-door with Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, urging city residents to get vaccinated. But the Biden team is still unsure how many people could be swayed by these more local appeals. The White House is now planning for what top officials see as inevitable Covid-19 surges in several states with low vaccination rates later this summer and into the fall. Many states have already tried on their own to encourage people to get Covid-19 shots — often through lotteries and other financial incentives. But that strategy has largely failed, and Delta Covid-19 cases continue to rise. The CDC is now considering whether to update guidelines for schools and for domestic and international travel. Federal and state health officials are debating how and whether to recommend proof of vaccination for everything from restaurants to movie theaters to office buildings. The fear, Fauci recently told POLITICO, is that recommending proof of vaccination could cause an uproar among unvaccinated people. While federal health officials have pledged so-called vaccine passports will not be implemented at the national level, some states and private businesses have explored using vaccine passes to support safe reopening.

European Union officials have recently put pressure on U.S. diplomats overseas to open up travel to the U.S. with proof of vaccination, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the matter. Germany recently issued an order that allows all U.S. residents to fly into the country if they can prove vaccination or a negative Covid-19 test. For now, Biden administration officials say the increasing number of Delta cases is cause for worry but not overwhelming dread. The Pfizer vaccine in wide use in the U.S. works well against the variant; Moderna’s vaccine uses similar technology, so the hope is that it will be similarly effective in warding off Delta. The CDC is currently in the midst of conducting studies to pin down just how well the current vaccines protect against Delta and what impact it has on the unvaccinated population, particularly children. “We have to stay vigilant. We see this strain is affecting how much protection people get from the first dose dramatically,” said Phil Febbo, chief medical officer of DNA sequencing company Illumina, which is working with the CDC to study the spread of Covid-19 variants in the U.S. “I don't think we're that far away from a different variant that goes beyond the Delta and decreases significantly the efficacy of both doses.”

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

This article about the mass pilot events which took place in the U.K. in April and May is good news , but has to be taken with caution.

It's a positive step forward in my opinion, and gives hope for future gigs and events here in the U.K.


[www.bbc.co.uk]

More of the same news. Those unvaccinated, look out Delta is coming for you. You have all been warned.

Threat of delta variant looms large in unvaccinated South
Vaccination efforts have hit a wall just as the delta variant is is gaining a foothold in the U.S.

Chelsea Stahl / NBC News; Getty Images
June 27, 2021, 3:00 AM PDT
By Denise Chow and Erika Edwards
Dr. Rachael Lee is still haunted by memories of the last surge.

She recalled emotional weeks in January when cases of Covid-19 peaked in Alabama, threatening to overwhelm her hospital in Birmingham. In the months since, the situation in her city — and across the United States — has improved significantly, but Lee can’t help but feel a new looming sense of dread.

"I think it's hard for some people to understand that this has not gone away," said Lee, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "And it's easy to forget that we're seeing the spread of these variants, and the delta variant in particular."

In Alabama, vaccination efforts have hit a wall just as the delta variant ofthe coronavirus, a more contagious variant first detected in India, is gaining a foothold and spreading rapidly in the country.

The variant is well on its way to becoming the dominant strain in the U.S., with cases doubling every two weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of June 19, the variant was responsible for 20 percent of new cases. Just four days earlier, the CDC had declared the delta variant a “variant of concern,” citing growing evidence that it is more transmissible and causes more severe disease.

HEALTH

Delta variant is 'greatest threat' to eliminating Covid in U.S., Fauci says
That could be worrisome for many states, particularly in rural parts of the Southeast, where areas with low vaccine uptake remain vulnerable to delta and potential future variants like it. The country’s patchwork recovery, with uneven vaccination rates between states and sometimes even bigger discrepancies at the local level, could mean the U.S. is on the cusp of a new wave of infections — one punctuated by local surges that disproportionately affect rural communities and pockets of the country where vaccinations have lagged.

"A variant like delta that has more transmissibility will lead to more hospitalizations and more deaths among a population that has low vaccination coverage," said Dr. Henry Walke, director of the CDC's division of preparedness and emerging infections.

That’s what Lee fears.

“In the state of Alabama, vaccine uptake has slowed to a crawl,” she said. “When we see lower vaccine uptake in places that rolled back restrictions and variants like delta spreading, that’s exactly what we infectious disease doctors worry about.”

Just under 32 percent of people in Alabama are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, compared to Vermont, one of the best-performing states, where 64 percent of its population is fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

The situation is similar nextdoor in Mississippi, where the number of fully vaccinated individuals sits below 29 percent, leaving the vast majority of residents vulnerable to infection.

Many Mississippians who remain unvaccinated are from poor, rural areas of the state and may not be able to afford transportation to towns with adequate supplies of vaccines.

And resources in many rural areas are already strained, making it challenging for these communities to deal with Covid-19 outbreaks and hampering outreach efforts to combat vaccine hesitancy.

“This past decade we’ve seen a large number of rural hospitals and associated doctor’s offices close,” said Timothy Callaghan, an assistant professor at Texas A&M University School of Public Health who studies rural health issues. “There are just fewer physicians and medical providers in general in these rural areas, so they may not have the infrastructure in place to convince people to get vaccinated.”

Dr. DeGail Hadley, a family physician in rural Cleveland, Mississippi, also worries his neighbors are at "the point where they think they can't get the virus." He is now working with local parishes to encourage vaccination. "It takes a grassroots effort to get out to the community and talk with people," he said.

Low vaccination rates in rural Tennessee are driving new Covid-19 cases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, said Dr. Todd Rice, director of the center's medical intensive care unit.

They're scared. They're sick. They don't feel well. They have Covid. When they come in, they all say, 'I should have gotten vaccinated.'

"Patients we're seeing now are transferred to us from a rural area," he said, such as Macon, Trousdale and Smith counties in Tennessee. Vaccination rates in those counties hover around 20 percent, while nearly 45 percent of those living in Nashville's Davidson County are fully vaccinated.

"They're scared. They're sick. They don't feel well. They have Covid," Rice said of his patients. "When they come in, they all say, 'I should have gotten vaccinated.'"

'Sporadic tragedies'
As Tennessee shows, a state’s overall vaccination numbers can offer an incomplete picture, especially in places where there are stark differences in vaccine uptake from county to county. What that means is that while parts of the country — and even parts of certain states — with high vaccination rates will likely be able to stave off another big uptick in cases, other communities may become hotbeds of infection.

“It’ll play out as sporadic tragedies that are preventable,” said Jeremy Kamil, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Louisiana State University Health Shreveport. “It’s unlikely that we’ll see a replay of January 2021 in August 2021, but we’ve already had 600,000 deaths in this country. How much more do we want?”

Walke, of the CDC, said he’s particularly concerned about the potential for surges in the fall and winter, especially in areas with lower vaccine uptake.

"I'm worried about what's going to happen in September as we move indoors and as schools open up again," Walke said. "The way to protect those kids is to vaccinate everyone else."

In the United Kingdom, children are driving the surge in delta cases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a White House Covid-19 briefing Tuesday. The delta variant accounts for more than 95 percent of cases in the U.K., he said.

Vaccine clinical trials for young children are ongoing in the U.S., but currently only people 12 and up are eligible to receive the shots. Though healthy kids are at much lower risk of serious illness and death from Covid-19, they can spread the virus.

“With children, the concern is transmission to others,” said Dr. Katherine Baumgarten, an infectious disease specialist at Ochsner Health in New Orleans. “This is now a preventable disease in those that can get vaccinated, so it’s important to continue to study the vaccine in children.”

Tracking delta
In Shreveport, Kamil and his colleagues regularly sequence the genomes of virus samples from across Louisiana, and around the country, to monitor how the coronavirus is mutating and to track where and how the different variants are spreading.

So far, 10 cases of the delta variant have been identified in Louisiana, but with less than 34 percent of people in the state fully vaccinated against Covid-19, and just 29.5 percent of people in Shreveport, Kamil knows that number could multiply quickly.

“All it takes is a small minority of people who aren’t vaccinated or have low enough immunity to allow the virus to spread and keep the pandemic smoldering,” he said.

Kamil knows because he’s seen it before, with a different variant known as alpha that was first identified in the United Kingdom. The alpha variant, which was previously called B.1.1.7, became the dominant strain in the U.S. in April, overtaking all others that had been circulating in the country.

Kamil’s lab at Louisiana State University Health Shreveport sequenced its first sample of the alpha variant in early April. Now, he estimates that more than 90 percent of the samples he and his colleagues sequence are alpha cases.

What we know about delta
There are several ways through which scientists can evaluate whether a newly identified variant is more contagious, whether it causes more severe disease and what kind of response it has to existing vaccines. The first part involves mining epidemiological data, which can reveal insights about the specific variant involved, the community where it was spreading, any symptoms the patient developed and whether the person was vaccinated or not.

But researchers can also drill down into the virus’ sequenced genome to identify specific mutations that are acquired as the pathogen replicates and evolves. These random mutations are often inconsequential, but occasionally some will make the virus better able to hijack human cells, thus making it more contagious, or change what the virus can do after it invades the body, potentially enabling it to cause more severe illness.

"Every mutation buys the virus a lottery ticket. Sometimes that lottery ticket comes up with a mutation which enables it to transmit to more people," said Bill Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

In early June, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the delta variant was thought to be 40 percent more transmissible than the alpha variant, though studies were ongoing at the time. Subsequent research from Public Health England suggested the delta variant is 60 percent more transmissible in households, compared to the alpha variant.

“As variants emerge, we are noticing that there is a difference in transmissibility as well as the potential for more dangerous outcomes,” said Dr. Alejandro Perez-Trepichio, an internist and chief medical officer for the Millennium Physician Group, which represents 550 doctors across 19 counties in Florida. “In the case of the delta variant, its transmission rate has been quoted as 40 to 60 percent higher than the previous U.K. variant, and that was in turn higher than the original one. So we’re seeing this multiplying effect.”

Based on data from the U.K., there are indications that the vaccines may be slightly less effective against the delta variant, compared to alpha and others that were previously identified. This is especially true for people who have received only one shot of a two-dose regimen.

But as was the case with the alpha variant, the available vaccines appear to offer good protection against delta in people who are fully vaccinated. An analysis released June 14 by Public Health England found that two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were 96 percent effective against hospitalization from the delta variant and two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were 92 percent effective.

“It certainly raises the stakes for vaccination,” Kamil said of the results.

And if breakthrough infections — meaning infections in fully vaccinated people — do occur, they appear to be mild. "You've taken something that would have been serious and turned it into something which is manageable," Hanage said.

As the delta variant continues to take hold in the U.S., epidemiologists are paying close attention to what's happening in Southeastern states like Alabama, Florida and Mississippi — particularly in those areas with low vaccination rates.

"It was about this time last year that the South started demonstrating to us that yes, this can transmit in the summer," Hanage said. "It'll be very interesting and quite valuable to see what happens."

Smart kids. Good for them.

As parents forbid COVID shots, defiant teens seek ways to get them
Jan Hoffman
,
New York Times
June 26, 2021
Updated: June 27, 2021 11:26 a.m.
Kelly Danielpour, founder of the website VaxTeen.org, in Los Angeles, June 16, 2021. Increasingly, frustrated teenagers are searching for ways to be vaccinated without their parents?• consent. ?'Someone will ask me, ?
Kelly Danielpour, founder of the website VaxTeen.org, in Los Angeles, June 16, 2021. Increasingly, frustrated teenagers are searching for ways to be vaccinated without their parents?• consent. ?’Someone will ask me, ?”I need to be able to consent at a vaccine clinic that is open on weekends and that is on my bus route.?•?“ said Danielpour, 18.

Teenagers keep all sorts of secrets from their parents. Drinking. Sex. Lousy grades.

But the secret that Elizabeth, 17, a rising high school senior from New York City, keeps from hers is new to the buffet of adolescent misdeeds. She doesn’t want her parents to know that she is vaccinated against COVID-19.


Her divorced parents have equal say over her health care. Although her mother strongly favors the vaccine, her father angrily opposes it and has threatened to sue her mother if Elizabeth gets the shot. Elizabeth is keeping her secret not only from her father, but also her mother, so her mom can have plausible deniability. (Elizabeth asked to be identified only by her middle name.)

The vaccination of children is crucial to achieving broad immunity to the coronavirus and returning to normal school and work routines. But although COVID vaccines have been authorized for children as young as 12, many parents, worried about side effects and frightened by the newness of the shots, have held off from permitting their children to get them.

A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only 3 in 10 parents of children ages 12-17 intended to allow them to be vaccinated immediately. Many say they will wait for long-term safety data or the prod of a school mandate. But with many teenagers eager to get shots that they see as unlocking freedoms denied during the pandemic, tensions are crackling in homes in which parents are holding to a hard no.

Forty states require parental consent for vaccination of minors under 18, and Nebraska sets the age at 19. (Some states carve out exemptions for teenagers who are homeless or emancipated.) Now, because of the COVID crisis, some states and cities are seeking to relax medical consent rules, emulating statutes that permit minors to obtain the HPV vaccine, which prevents some cancers caused by a sexually transmitted virus.


A 15-year-old who has been excluded from some social circles after her mother has prevented her from getting a COVID vaccine, in Florida, June 2021. Increasingly, frustrated teenagers are searching for ways to be vaccinated without their parents?• consent.

Last fall, the District of Columbia City Council voted to allow children as young as 11 to get recommended vaccines without parental consent. New Jersey and New York legislatures have bills pending that would allow children as young as 14 to consent to vaccines; Minnesota has one that would permit some children as young as 12 to consent to COVID shots.

But other states are marching in the opposite direction. Although South Carolina teenagers can consent at 16, and doctors may perform certain medically necessary procedures without parental permission on even younger children, a bill in the legislature would explicitly bar providers from giving the COVID shot without parental consent to minors. In Oregon, where the age of medical consent is 15, Linn County ordered county-run clinics to obtain parental consent for the COVID shot for anyone under 18. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which has been tracking COVID-related bills, some states, including Tennessee and Alabama, are working on legislation to prevent public schools from requiring COVID shots.

The issue of who can consent to COVID shots is providing fresh context for decades-old legal, ethical and medical questions. When parents disagree, who is the arbiter? At what age are children capable of making their own health decisions and how should that be determined?


“Isabella wants it because her friends are getting it, and she doesn’t want to wear a mask,” said Charisse, mother of a 17-year-old in Delray Beach, Florida, who asked that her last name be withheld for family privacy. Charisse fears the shot could have an effect on her daughter’s reproductive system (a misperception that public health officials have repeatedly refuted).


“Isabella said, ‘It’s my body.’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s my body until you’re 18.’”

As both the legal debates and family arguments unfold, those administering the vaccine at pharmacies, clinics and medical offices are trying to determine how to proceed when a young teen shows up for the COVID shot without a parent.

“We may be in a legal gray zone with this vaccine,” said Dr. Sterling Ransone Jr., a family physician in Deltaville, Virginia. In his health system, a parent can send a signed consent form for a teenager to be vaccinated. But because the COVID vaccine is authorized only for emergency use, the health system requires a parent to be present for a patient under 18 to get that shot.

Marina, 15, who lives in Palm Beach County, Florida — and who, like others interviewed, asked not to be fully identified — longs for the shot. But her mother says absolutely not. The subject is not open for discussion.

And so Marina has been excluded from the social life she covets. “Five of my friends are throwing a party and they invited me, but then they said, ‘Are you vaccinated?’” she said. “So I can’t go. That hurts.”

As the pandemic ebbs, some teen social circles are reconstituting based on vaccination status. Marina said, “I see my friends posting on social media — ‘Woo-Hoo I got it!’ — and now when I see them, they ask me things like, ‘Where have you been? Are you traveling a lot? Are you sure you don’t have COVID?’ It sucks that I can’t get the shot.”

Increasingly, frustrated teenagers are searching for ways to be vaccinated without their parents’ consent. Some have found their way to VaxTeen.org, a vaccine information site run by Kelly Danielpour, a Los Angeles teenager.

The site offers guides to state consent laws, links to clinics, resources on straightforward information about COVID-19 and advice for how teenagers can engage parents.

“Someone will ask me, ‘I need to be able to consent at a vaccine clinic that is open on weekends and that is on my bus route. Can you help?’” said Danielpour, 18, who will begin her freshman year at Stanford in the fall.

She started the site two years ago, well before COVID. The daughter of a pediatric neurosurgeon and an intellectual property lawyer, she realized that most adolescents know neither the recommended vaccine schedule nor their rights.

“We automatically talk about parents but not about teens as having opinions on this issue,” she said. “I decided I needed to help.” Danielpour wrangled experts to help her understand vaccination and consent laws, and she recruited teenagers to be “VaxTeen ambassadors.”

“I want teenagers to be able to say to pediatricians, ‘Hey, I have this right,’” said Danielpour, who gives talks at conferences to physicians and health department officials.

Elizabeth surreptitiously got her vaccine at a school pop-up clinic.

After administrators at her boarding school informed parents they would be offering COVID shots, her mother gave permission. Her father forbade it. Upset, Elizabeth consulted the school nurse, who said she could not be vaccinated without approval from both. Elizabeth researched state laws, learning that she wasn’t old enough to consent on her own.

She showed up anyway. At worst, she figured, the school would just turn her away.

Apparently, they took note only of her mother’s consent. Saying nothing, Elizabeth stuck out her arm.

Now she is in a pickle. The school is requiring students to be vaccinated for the fall semester and she says her father has begun warring with the administration over the issue. Elizabeth is afraid that if he learns how she was vaccinated, he will be furious and tell the school, which will discipline her for having deceived vaccinators, a stain on her record just as she is applying to college.

Gregory Zimet, a psychologist and professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, pointed out the irony of an adolescent being legally prevented from making a choice that was strenuously urged by public health officials. Developmentally, he said, adolescents at 14 and even younger are at least as good as adults at weighing the risks of a vaccine. “Which isn’t to say that adults are necessarily great at it,” he said.

In many states, young teenagers can make decisions around contraception and sexually transmitted infections, which are, he noted, “in many ways more complex and fraught than getting a vaccine.”

Pediatricians say that even parents who have themselves been vaccinated are wary for their children. Dr. Jay Lee, a family physician and chief medical officer of Share Our Selves, a community health network in Orange County, California, said parents say they would rather risk their child having COVID than get the new vaccine.

“I will validate their concerns,” Lee said, “but I point out that waiting to see if your child gets sick is not a good strategy. And that no, COVID is not just like the flu.”

Elise Yarnell, a senior clinic operations manager for the Portland, Oregon, area at Providence, a large health care system, recalled a 16-year-old girl who showed up at a COVID vaccine clinic at her school in Yamhill County.

Her parents oppose the vaccine, so she wanted to get it without their knowing, which she could do legally because Oregon’s age of consent is 15. She teared up when she saw the shots were not ready before she had to be home, but she was able to return that night without alerting her parents and was vaccinated.

“She was extremely relieved,” Yarnell said.

Isabella, the 17-year-old daughter of Charisse, the Florida mother who refuses to grant permission for the vaccine. Asked why she wanted the shot, Isabella gave a stream of reasons. “A lot of older people in my family are at risk for catching COVID and possibly dying,” she said. “I want to get the vaccine so I can be around them, and they’ll be safe. And then I can go out with my friends again, and they won’t be so much at risk either.”

Although doctors have been trying to instill vaccine confidence in parents as well as patients, there’s not much they can do when parents object. Recently, Dr. Mobeen Rathore, a pediatrics professor at the University of Florida medical college in Jacksonville, told a patient whose mother refused consent that she couldn’t get the COVID vaccine until she turned 18, three weeks hence.

“She got vaccinated on her birthday,” Rathore said. “She sent me a message saying that was her birthday gift to herself.”



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2021-06-28 05:17 by daspyknows.

Gee, ya think?

Calls rise for FDA to fully approve COVID-19 vaccines

[thehill.com]

Quote
bleedingman
Gee, ya think?

Calls rise for FDA to fully approve COVID-19 vaccines

[thehill.com]

Would that make any difference to you?

From the Guardian:

Delta Covid variant may be edging race against vaccines

Delta

Analysis: research suggests ‘scarily fleeting’ contact could infect, and that places with high jab rates are susceptible

The transmission advantage of the Delta variant that is spreading at pace globally is a sign that the race between vaccination and the virus could tip in favour of the latter unless countries ramp up their immunisation campaigns and practise caution, scientists say. The variant, first detected in India, has been identified in at least 92 countries and is considered the “fittest” variant yet of the virus that causes Covid-19, with its enhanced ability to prey on the vulnerable – particularly in places with low vaccination rates. Research conducted in the UK, where the variant accounts for 99% of new Covid cases, suggests it is about 60% more transmissible than the Alpha variant, which previously dominated. It may also be linked to a greater risk of hospitalisation and is somewhat more resistant to vaccines, particularly after one dose. “This is the problem with hanging everything on vaccines until you’ve got something near a population immunity threshold … you need a much higher coverage to protect against a variant that’s more transmissible,” said Dr Stephen Griffin, a virologist and associate professor at the University of Leeds school of medicine. “It just speaks to the fact that we really, really must keep cases down at the same time as rolling the vaccines out.”

The calls for caution come at a time when research in Australia indicates just how easily the Delta variant can potentially spread. Based on CCTV footage, health officials suspect it has been transmitted in “scarily fleeting” encounters of roughly five to 10 seconds between people walking past each other in an indoor shopping area in Sydney in at least two instances. There were no mask mandates in place in Sydney at the time, and the individuals were unlikely to have been vaccinated given that less than 5% of the Australian population have received both doses. The city and some surrounding areas entered a strict two-week lockdown on Saturday in an effort to curb the spread of the Delta variant. It is clear that Delta has a substantial transmission advantage, but scientists have not yet established why. Prof Catherine Noakes, a member of the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and an expert in airborne infections at the University of Leeds, suggested three possible reasons: that the people it infects have a higher viral load, meaning they would emit more particles; that people need to be exposed to less of the virus to become infected; or that a relatively short exposure time to an infected person is enough to spread the disease. It is possible that a person could be infected by being close to a carrier for a few seconds, if the carrier were to exhale a load of virus particles and the person just happened to breathe in at exactly the wrong moment, she said. “What it doesn’t necessarily mean is that it’s transmitting that way all the time for everybody. It may well just be one of these really unlucky events.”

The World Health Organization is urging even fully vaccinated people to “play it safe” by continuing to wear masks, maintain social distance and practise other safety measures, to deal with the Delta variant. Israel, where about 55% of the population has been fully vaccinated, reimposed its mask mandate on Friday to combat the rapid rise in Delta cases just 10 days after having lifted it. Infections more than quadrupled last week, attributed to two school outbreaks. Eligibility for the vaccine was extended to 12- to 15-year-olds last month, but take-up in the age group has been low. The rise in cases in Israel has not yet translated into an increase in hospital admissions and deaths, so the move is likely to be a precautionary one, Noakes said. “The virus is circulating in society, so even if you’ve not got high numbers of deaths, it still causes quite a lot of disruption, people having to isolate, people getting sick, people with long Covid,” she said. Griffin said: “The ideal scenario is that you build your vaccine wall before you get exposed to variants because that means that even if you do get an outbreak, you’ve got sufficiently few people that are susceptible that the R [reproduction number] never gets above 1, you don’t see an increase in that outbreak. “The problem is that we haven’t reached that protective level, and so if you do get infections and cases growing there’s plenty of susceptible people to pass that infection on to. “This is sign … that we must go belt and braces in all of this. There’s no point leaving it half done – we can’t ignore children in vaccination campaigns,” he said. “If we do, then we could end up in a cycle of variants.”

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

[www.dailymail.co.uk]
More anti lockdown protests in London today, this time against the continued restrictions on music venues and clubs.

Elderly rock stars who depend on the science to enable them to go out on tour must be scratching their heads trying to process all of this.

From the Guardian:

Sports fans warned: you will be guinea pigs at UK summer events

Scientists voice concern that supporters who have tickets for the Euros, Wimbledon and Silverstone may not be aware of risks

Coronvirus

People attending major sporting events over the next few weeks should be told explicitly that they are taking part in potentially risky research, scientists have warned. Approximately 40,000 fans are due to attend England’s clash with Germany at Wembley on Tuesday, while the crowd will be 60,000 for the semi-finals and final next week. Tens of thousands will head to Wimbledon from tomorrow, while next month 140,000 are expected at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix. Health experts say these events are being permitted purely to determine the risks involved in major gatherings that might then be held later in the year as the nation attempts to return to some kind of normality. “These are research projects. That is the only reason they are being permitted,” said Professor John Edmunds of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He added that he was concerned people were buying tickets without realising these events were being permitted only to assess the likelihood of viruses being spread at large gatherings. “We have to do this if we want to fully open up sporting and cultural events. I accept that, but I’m not sure people buying tickets are fully aware that there is a risk involved, and that the purpose of the event is to measure what dangers are posed.”

Last week, the UK government’s Events Research Programme reported that it had found that coronavirus transmission was no higher among those who attended a series of sports and entertainment events that were held in April and May than it had been in the general population at the time. The news triggered encouraging noises from the government that mass events could open up without restrictions from 19 July. But Edmunds sounded a note of caution. The events studied over the two previous months had relatively low attendances and were held at a time when prevalence of the virus in the general population was also very low. Today, it is much higher and crowds at future events will be much greater and more closely packed, he added. “We need to bear that in mind,” he said. The vast majority of people taking part in the pilots failed to return PCR tests [after the event], casting further doubt over the results. This point was backed by Shaun Fitzgerald, from the department of engineering at Cambridge University. “These events are part of a research programme and would not be going ahead if they did not have a scientific purpose. “The data we get back about the viral transmission that occurs at these gatherings will then inform the decisions made about future mass gatherings later in the year.” Fitzgerald added that the crowd research envisaged for the Euros, Wimbledon and Silverstone was on a par with clinical trials in which people cooperate to test the efficacy and safety of drugs and vaccines for the good of society. “Certainly it is very important that everybody attending understands this is part of a research exercise.”

During the course of the research, scientists will study the impact of “pinch points” where attendees might congregate; the usefulness of masks and ventilation; the impact of testing; and the effectiveness of social distancing measures. Analysis by the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B ) has also identified travel to and from the venue as potentially a greater risk than behaviour at the venue itself, where activity can be more regulated, added John Drury, professor of social psychology at Sussex University. “However, the other key point made is that risk behaviours – such as proximity and touching – are driven by psychological processes that are subject to change,” he said. “As part of this, it’s really important that key information is provided to fans – such as the importance of not breathing others’ air.”

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

A study finds that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines could offer protection for years.

[www.nytimes.com]

Duplicate of the post above.

Looks like the microchips and magnetic crystals are doing their job. The promising thing is there may be stronger immunity for those who survived infection AND are vaccinated.

Pfizer, Moderna Vaccines Likely to Produce Long-Lasting Immunity, Study Suggests

Apoorva Mandavilli
,
New York Times
June 28, 2021
Updated: June 28, 2021 10:52 a.m.
The vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna set off a persistent immune reaction in the body that may protect against the coronavirus for years, scientists reported Monday.
The findings add to growing evidence that most people immunized with the mRNA vaccines may not need boosters, so long as the virus and its variants do not evolve much beyond their current forms — which is not guaranteed. People who recovered from COVID-19 before being vaccinated may not need boosters even if the virus does make a significant transformation.
“It’s a good sign for how durable our immunity is from this vaccine,” said Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis who led the study, which was published in the journal Nature.
The study did not consider the coronavirus vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson, but Ellebedy said he expected the immune response to be less durable than that produced by mRNA vaccines.
Ellebedy and his colleagues reported last month that in people who survived COVID-19, immune cells that recognize the virus lie quiescent in the bone marrow for at least eight months after infection. A study by another team indicated that so-called memory B cells continue to mature and strengthen for at least a year after infection.
Based on those findings, researchers suggested that immunity might last for years, possibly a lifetime, in people who were infected with the coronavirus and later vaccinated. But it was unclear whether vaccination alone might have a similarly long-lasting effect.
Ellebedy’s team sought to address that question by looking at the source of memory cells: the lymph nodes, where immune cells train to recognize and fight the virus.
After an infection or a vaccination, a specialized structure called the germinal center forms in lymph nodes. This structure is an elite school of sorts for B cells — a boot camp where they become increasingly sophisticated and learn to recognize a diverse set of viral genetic sequences.
The broader the range and the longer these cells have to practice, the more likely they are to be able to thwart variants of the virus that may emerge.
“Everyone always focuses on the virus evolving — this is showing that the B cells are doing the same thing,” said Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. “And it’s going to be protective against ongoing evolution of the virus, which is really encouraging.”
After infection with the coronavirus, the germinal center forms in the lungs. But after vaccination, the cells’ education takes place in lymph nodes in the armpits, within reach of researchers.
Ellebedy and his colleagues recruited 41 people — including eight with a history of infection with the virus — who were immunized with two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. From 14 of these people, the team extracted samples from the lymph nodes at three, four, five, seven and 15 weeks after the first dose.
That painstaking work makes this a “heroic study,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale. “This kind of careful time-course analysis in humans is very difficult to do.”
Ellebedy’s team found that 15 weeks after the first dose of vaccine, the germinal center was still highly active in all 14 of the participants, and that the number of memory cells that recognized the coronavirus had not declined.
“The fact that the reactions continued for almost four months after vaccination — that’s a very, very good sign,” Ellebedy said. Germinal centers typically peak one to two weeks after immunization, and then wane.
“Usually by four to six weeks, there’s not much left,” said Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona. But germinal centers stimulated by the mRNA vaccines are “still going, months into it, and not a lot of decline in most people.”
Bhattacharya noted that most of what scientists know about the persistence of germinal centers is based on animal research. The new study is the first to show what happens in people after vaccination.
The results suggest that a vast majority of vaccinated people will be protected over the long term — at least, against the existing coronavirus variants. But older adults, people with weak immune systems and those who take drugs that suppress immunity may need boosters; people who survived COVID-19 and were later immunized may never need them at all.
Exactly how long the protection from mRNA vaccines will last is hard to predict. In the absence of variants that sidestep immunity, in theory immunity could last a lifetime, experts said. But the virus is clearly evolving.
“Anything that would actually require a booster would be variant-based, not based on waning of immunity,” Bhattacharya said. “I just don’t see that happening.”
People who were infected with the coronavirus and then immunized see a major boost in their antibody levels, most likely because their memory B cells — which produce antibodies — had many months to evolve before vaccination.
The good news: A booster vaccine will probably have the same effect as prior infection in immunized people, Ellebedy said. “If you give them another chance to engage, they will have a massive response,” he said, referring to memory B cells.
In terms of bolstering the immune system, vaccination is “probably better” than recovering from the actual infection, he said. Other studies have suggested that the repertoire of memory B cells produced after vaccination is more diverse than that generated by infection, suggesting that the vaccines will protect better against variants than natural immunity alone.
Ellebedy said the results also suggested that these signs of persistent immune reaction might be caused by mRNA vaccines alone, as opposed to those made by more traditional means, like Johnson & Johnson’s.
But that is an unfair comparison, because the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is given as a single dose, Iwasaki said: “If the J & J had a booster, maybe it will induce this same kind of response.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2021-06-29 01:11 by daspyknows.

Personally, I think this thread has devolved into insults and ought to be closed. None of this calling people retards does any good, it just makes the place emit a foul odor.

And really, bringing up Mr/Ms Jenner is like bringing up @#$%&: end of discussion.

jb

Meanwhile in L.A. County...

Health Officials Strongly Recommend Masks be Worn Indoors as COVID-19 `Delta' Variant Spreads

The county Department of Public Health urged everyone -- regardless of vaccination status -- to wear masks in settings such as grocery or retail stores,
theaters, family entertainment centers and workplaces when the vaccination status of other workers isn't known.

The Mask

Breaking from current guidance allowing residents who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to shed their face masks in most situations, Los Angeles County health officials Monday “strongly” recommended that everyone wear masks in indoor public places due to rapid spread of a highly contagious virus mutation. The county Department of Public Health urged everyone -- regardless of vaccination status -- to wear masks in settings such as grocery or retail stores, theaters, family entertainment centers and workplaces when the vaccination status of other workers isn't known. “Until we better understand how and to who the `Delta' variant is spreading, everyone should focus on maximum protection with minimum interruption to routine as all businesses operate without other restrictions like physical distancing and capacity limits,” according to a statement from the agency.

The “Delta” variant of COVID-19 originated in India, and is blamed for rampant infections in that country and outbreaks in the United Kingdom and beyond. Federal health authorities are estimating that 20% of all new COVID-19 infections in the country are now due to the “Delta” variant, up from 10% a week ago. The variant is considered to be far more contagious than previous mutations of the COVID-19 virus, and potentially capable of making patients more severely ill. Health officials have said people who are fully vaccinated are protected against the variant. “While COVID-19 vaccine provides very effective protection preventing hospitalizations and deaths against the Delta variant, the strain is proving to be more transmissible and is expected to become more prevalent,” Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a statement Monday. “Mask wearing remains an effective tool for reducing transmission, especially indoors, where the virus may be easily spread through inhalation of aerosols emitted by an infected person.” Last week, Ferrer said a total of 123 cases of the “Delta” variant had been identified in the county, roughly double the number from a week earlier. But since the county conducts very limited sequential testing required to identify the variant, she said the rising number means there are likely many more such infections in the community. Health officials noted that while fully vaccinated people are well-protected against the variant, people who are only partially vaccinated remain vulnerable. People who are not vaccinated are at high risk due to the ease of transmission of the “Delta” variant, health officials said.

When the state of California lifted the vast majority of its COVID-19 restrictions on June 15, mask-wearing rules were eased significantly. Fully vaccinated residents were allowed to stop wearing masks in most situations, with the exception of indoor mega-events attended by 5,000 or more people, and at businesses that continue to require them. The guidance announced Monday by the county Department of Public Health urging everyone to resume wearing masks in indoor public places is only a recommendation, not an official health order. But health officials say the agency “strongly recommends” that people mask up indoors. The recommendation mirrors a recommendation made over the weekend by the World Health Organization. The county on Monday reported three new COVID-19 deaths, raising the death toll to 24,480. Another 238 cases were also confirmed, raising the cumulative total to 1,249,560. According to state figures, there were 229 people hospitalized due to COVID-19 in the county as of Monday, down from 238 on Sunday. There were 55 people in intensive care, up from 52 on Sunday. As of June 20, more than 10.2 million doses of vaccine had been administered in the county, with 67% of residents age 16 and over having at least one dose, and 58% fully vaccinated.

The county will continue offering incentives for people to get vaccinated. Continuing through Thursday, people age 18 and older who get vaccinated at sites operated by the county, city of Los Angeles or St. John's Well Child and Family Center will be entered for a chance to win one of two season ticket packages to Six Flags, the Los Angeles Zoo, the Natural History Museum and the La Brea Tar Pits, along with ticket packs for the California Science Center. The contest is open to anyone who comes to one of the participating sites for a first dose of vaccine, or anyone who is obtaining a second dose and brings a first-dose patient with them. Ferrer stressed the level of protection offered by the COVID-19 vaccines, releasing statistics showing that between Dec. 7 and June 7, 99.6% of all new COVID-19 infections in the county involved people who were not vaccinated. Of the people who were hospitalized due to the virus in that time period, 98.7% were unvaccinated. And among those who died, 99.8% were unvaccinated.

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

Quote
bleedingman
I find it ludicrous that the school of thought among some laymen is that if you don't get vaccinated, you will get the virus. If one follows that train of thought then many, many people who, for whatever reason are not vaccinated, maybe a billion or so people, will get sick and possibly die. That is not science, that is propaganda.

More and more virus experts do say you will get covid-19 unless you get the vaccine. It's just a matter of time. Unless you live in a cave or on a remote isolated island on your own.

Bjornulf

Quote
bv

Quote
bleedingman
I find it ludicrous that the school of thought among some laymen is that if you don't get vaccinated, you will get the virus. If one follows that train of thought then many, many people who, for whatever reason are not vaccinated, maybe a billion or so people, will get sick and possibly die. That is not science, that is propaganda.

More and more virus experts do say you will get covid-19 unless you get the vaccine. It's just a matter of time. Unless you live in a cave or on a remote isolated island on your own.

Oh, I don’t doubt those unvaccinated long-term will eventually contract the virus. How many will die, however? Not huge numbers in the developed world, I’d imagine. Practically everyone over the age of 30 has been offered the jab here, in the U.K. Most offered it, have seemingly taken it, also.

If hospitals admittances are controlled and the NHS isn’t ‘overwhelmed’, then we’ve succeeded. There’s nothing more to do. July 19 has to be the full opening.

Watch out for the Delta mutation and the next wave which might come or not.
Other mutations will follow. Covid will not go away, we have to deal with it, e.g. with new vaccines and refreshing the vaccination every year (like the flu vaccines).

Quote
MAF
Watch out for the Delta mutation and the next wave which might come or not.
Other mutations will follow. Covid will not go away, we have to deal with it, e.g. with new vaccines and refreshing the vaccination every year (like the flu vaccines).

Doesn't really look that way (see the research report above, re Pfizer and Moderna).

It sounds plausible, though, but this time I hope you're wrong and the scientists are right

Quote
DandelionPowderman

Quote
MAF
Watch out for the Delta mutation and the next wave which might come or not.
Other mutations will follow. Covid will not go away, we have to deal with it, e.g. with new vaccines and refreshing the vaccination every year (like the flu vaccines).

Doesn't really look that way (see the research report above, re Pfizer and Moderna).

It sounds plausible, though, but this time I hope you're wrong and the scientists are right

Either way is good for those who are and are willing to get vaccinated. Delta variant is a special gift for those who refuse vaccination. Many of those who think catching Covid is not that big a deal will find out they were wrong.

Quote
jbwelda
Personally, I think this thread has devolved into insults and ought to be closed. None of this calling people retards does any good, it just makes the place emit a foul odor.

And really, bringing up Mr/Ms Jenner is like bringing up @#$%&: end of discussion.

jb

Offending posts will be deleted. It may take a few hours, but there is no room on IORR for hate, propaganda or personal insults.

Bjornulf