Here you are arguing for my exact point. If someone, whether they are UK citizen, resident, or traveller is part of 77 percent of unvaccinated in the UK that person poses the same risk to the population. Whether a person travels or not is immaterial.

As you noticed by quoting it, I specifically used the term "If all the above statements are accepted to be correct". Therefore if you have an issue with accepting this as true, then you should have addressed that point rather than just stating that it is wrong.

Once again muddled thinking.

Vaccines mutate when they are put under pressure to evolve.

The primary reason for this process to occur is through vaccination. As the vaccine starts to eradicate the virus it must change or die.

The notion that unvaccinated people are responsible for mutating viruses shows a lack of understanding about how the human immune system functions.

I fully agree to *ted*

Unfortunately it gets harder to even discuss that open minded..

Surfy

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About Overlanding, Travelogues, Equipment
Trans-Africa over the west coast

The first definition I came across for a vaccine is:

Vaccines by definition are biological agents that elicit an immune response to a specific antigen derived from an infectious disease-causing pathogen

- https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=vaccine+definition+biology[INDENT]

They do not claim to offer immunity. The immune response that the COVID vaccine was designed to get is one that reduces the hospitalisation and death rates. As I said before they happen to reduce the infection and transmisability rates as well as the designed benefits.

That you assign the definition that it provides immunity is your muddled thinking. Granted in many cases it is the outcome, but not in all cases.
Why, thanks for your support - I hope that you don't fall into one of those categories either now or in the future because it is not much fun.

The reality is that most of those that can't take some vaccines / medication have been isolating since March last year and the rest of their household have had to take measures beyond the norm. Many older people have done similarly. There is a cost for the individuals in terms of mental health, particularly those that live alone and this will have an impact of the rest of society in at least financial terms - so this is a societal problem and we can all help by getting the vaccine if we can, wearing masks properly etc.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

Sadly, this is also wrong. Viruses mutate whether under pressure or not. They tend to mutate at a steady rate varying by the stabillity of their genome - the virus genome is far less stable than ours - think of it as being closer aligned to the Haggunenon*. Have a read in the Metro they give a bit of background - https://metro.co.uk/2021/02/04/covid-uk-why-do-viruses-mutate-14017735/

The concern about large numbers of people being unvaccinated is that that tends to mean that there will be more people that have the full blown virus and as they tend to be have a higher viral load when they get the virus than those that have been vaccinated but have caught the virus anyway. It is this higher viral load that create more opportunities for the virus to mutate - more virus particles so more that may mutate. For someone that is vaccinated there have fewer virus particles in their system so fewer opportunities for the virus to mutate.

Added to that the evidence that those that have been vaccinated but have caught the virus are less likely to transmit the virus means that even if there is a mutation then it is less likely to be passed on.

At the end of the day the vaccines reduce the hospitalisation and death rates as they were designed to do. They also reduce the chances of catching the virus and the chances of passing it on. The way it does this is by training the body to recognise the prescence of virus particles and to then quickly swamp them with antibodies so that they don't cause a significant issue in the vast majority of cases - the body is able to generate the antibodies quickly as it has already done this once with the first and second doses of the vaccine - i.e. it knows the formula.

* - https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Haggunenons

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

Jay Benson

The definition you quoted indicated that the purpose of a vaccine was to promote an immune response.

Since the purpose of the human immune system is to promote an immune response thereby providing immunity from further infection, you are arguing my exact point.

I stated that the "primary" reason for pressure to cause virus evolution was through vaccination. I did not say every reason to cause pressure for virus evolution was through vaccination.

If you wish to read the opinion of a world renown virologist on this particular point then you can find his writings here.

https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/

A quick search reveals some interesting commentary on Dr Van Den Bossche

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/co...vanden-bossche

and https://vaxopedia.org/2021/03/14/who...anden-bossche/ provides these insightful comments

"You probably haven’t heard of Geert Vanden Bossche, Unless you run in anti-vaccine circles…"

"Should we stop vaccinating people in the middle of a pandemic that has already killed over 500,000 people in the United States alone on the word of someone who is board certified in Veterinary Virology, Microbiology and Animal Hygiene and hasn’t published a research paper since 1995?"

Make of it what you will

I'm amazed that even after 15 months people still can't grasp the basic issues with COVID, the pandemic, lockdowns and vaccinations.

The current situation in India should be all you need to know about how devastating the virus can be, if left unchecked. It may not be the most deadly disease in the world but its the speed and impact it causes that overwhelm health services that goes on to result in people dying in the streets waiting for medical help.

Totally fascinating: I hear several posters proving my points, although they clearly think otherwise. They apparently hear me proving their points. Throw in a couple of arguments about defining terms, one or two more about which authoritative voices can be trusted, and a lot of verbiage gets posted without anyone changing their minds.

I've always believed in our ability to learn from each other, but I've been forced to conclude that my confidence was, at best, misplaced. I hope we all emerge at some point from the current pandemic with intact lives, relationships, pastimes, and critical thinking abilities.

I feel immense sadness for those in the world not so well-favored as we are.

Mark

I've now - quite willingly and happily - had my second Astra Zenica jab, but accept that anyone and everyone should have the absolute right to refuse a vaccination. You're more than welcome to accept a higher risk of infection and potentially more serious consequences from such infection rather than accept the risk that taking the vaccine might pose; or indeed if you perceive that taking the vaccine might infringe upon your civil liberties, then no problem, 'just say no'.
As ever (though usually overlooked) all such 'rights' come with associated 'responsibilities' and in the case of Covid-19, that responsibility is that you should keep your choice to yourself and not impose it upon others. Your own country can't throw you out, but should others not wish you to enter their's, or businesses both home and abroad wish to exclude you from their premises, that's just good sense from both a public safety and economic standpoint. To claim it to be 'discrimination' is no less ludicrous than my saying the same about not being allowed to ride my motorbike in pedestrian areas, or ride a bicycle along a motorway

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BobnLes

One of the things that's gone unremarked (as far as I've seen anyway) about this outbreak is that it's the first major outbreak - ever - that the human race has tried to tackle head on. If you look back at major disease outbreaks in the past the best we've been able to do is offer palliative care for the sick and avoidance advice for the uninfected. At times this has amounted to no more than 'pray to the Lord' for the sick and 'run for the hills' for the healthy. We had neither the knowledge or the technology to do anything about the Black Death back in the 1350's and even as recently as the Spanish flu outbreak in 1918 the causative agent was unknown.

I wonder what the death toll would have been if Covid had spread though the world of even 50yrs ago. Back at the start of the outbreak 15 months ago there were serious academic predictions of 500,000 deaths in the UK and a disease that would become endemic in the population. By past standards 15 months is an unbelievably quick timescale to have got some sort of control over it. It's more by luck than anything that it came along at a time when we can - just - do more than watch it cut a swathe through the over 50's and the vulnerable.

Even a decade ago I doubt we'd have been able to produce any sort of vaccine in the timescale these ones have taken so it's probably not surprising there's been unforeseen consequences - social and otherwise - resulting from its rapid deployment. You'd have to be a politician to know whether there's an intentional hidden agenda riding in on the coat tails of the vaccine program (or whether they'll just take advantage /claim credit for any social changes that naturally occur) but so far just about all of the scare stories about microchips / 5G etc seem to have withered away. Whether the restrictions / economic upsets etc were worth it is I suspect something that'll be argued over for years but all I can say is that as someone in the age determined firing line for the virus I've been a huge beneficiary. If you're much younger, less likely to suffer health consequences but now out of work as a consequence of the changes you may have a different opinion.

In this instance I don't think I'll take any advice from an anti vaxer, populist vet
But I'll pass his advice on to my cat

Yikes! Sounds painful!

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Bruce Clarke - 2020 Yamaha XV250

The facts shows us, that there was severall "major incidents" in History where some scientist did see a worst case szenario comming

Birdflu
Swine flu
Sars
BSE

Today we have covid.

In Switzerland you can see that People at a age of 65 can pass away about corona. It is a 3% chance. It is a 6% change if you are over 80 years.
Yes, there are some joungers, there are long covid issues.

There is a fear, that covid could get more dangerous.

We have different vaccinations, where there is a "no" risk.

But with this "no risk" severall young people did pass away, severall people get serious sick.

We know, that without a wistleblower in isreal, we woulndt know about the pfizer vaccination risk issue. 1 of 20`000 young Person between 18-30 years is not nothing.

https://fortune.com/2021/04/27/israe...fizer-vaccine/

https://www.kardiologie.org/covid-19...ofakt/19005084

So we joungsters have today to decide which risk is higher.

Not easy.

- The maybe fear about the corona virus develops worse
- the real fear of healthy issues because of the vaccination

Personally I would vaccinate with a age of 80 without thinking about.

I would not vaccinate with an age below of 40. Why I should risk my health at this stage? The risk of getting an heavy impact on covid is very very tiny. Smaller than the impact risk on the vaccination.

What do we all do between?

In Switzerland it is probably winter till I can get a vaccination with my age. I will decide at this time. I`m happy that a lot of other is trying them in front of me. Because I can calculate the risk better in some months.

About 21% of the people in switzerland already had covid: https://www.luzernerzeitung.ch/schwe...die-ld.2093661

Surfy

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About Overlanding, Travelogues, Equipment
Trans-Africa over the west coast

First of all, the risk from contracting Covid is still much higher than the risk from getting the vaccine.

But what makes me really want to give up on humanity is the skewed focus that people have when it comes to public health. Let me try to sum up the most important point in this "debate":

IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU!

You don't wear a mask to avoid getting Covid . You wear it to decrease the chance of transmitting the virus to others in case you are infected. So when you decline wearing a mask in a public space you share with me, you're not primarily taking a risk on YOUR behalf, you're taking in on MY behalf. And frankly, I don't trust you to be competent enough to do that. So, to make it easier, WE, as a society, make mask wearing rules that take away your ability to take risks on behalf of everyone you meet. Forcing you to wear a mask in a shop is not about protecting YOU, it is about protecting EVERYONE ELSE from the statistically significant risk you pose.

It's the same with vaccines. Vaccines don't work by completely protecting the individual against infection or disease. No vaccine is 100% effective. They work by creating herd immunity, stopping the spread of the virus through a population. You don’t take the vaccine to protect yourself, you take it to protect others. If everyone had already had the opportunity to take the vaccine (which is not true due to medical reasons and supply shortages) and the effectiveness of the vaccine was 100%, it would be perfectly OK to just take the risk on your own behalf. But it isn’t. Not getting vaccinated means you’re putting everyone who cannot take the vaccine due to medical reasons and everyone who hasn’t yet been given the opportunity at risk. Focusing on your own freedom in that case seems pretty selfish to me. Yeah, you should have that freedom as long as you don’t put others at risk. But once you interact with others you are part of society, and if you reject taking basic measures to protect public health, the risk you pose outweighs the rights you claim to have to put everyone else at risk.

Through this pandemic we've all heard about the R-number, i.e. the number of people each infected person infects. This varies with a number of factors. In western societies it is approximately 4.5 unless measures are taken. In India the R-number is probably still less than 2 at the moment (obviously the whole statistics system has broken down), with the consequences being obvious. New variants may have higher R-numbers, which is the best evolutionary selector.

As it is unlikely that we can completely remove the virus from the population, we need to reduce the R-number to effectively stop outbreaks from happening. We can do that by restricting the infection vectors by avoiding situations where infections can happen (social distancing), by reducing the chance of transmission (mask wearing etc), or by achieving herd immunity. For the more mathematically inclined, it can be (massively simplified) to Re = R*S*(1-P)*(1-I) where Re is effective R, R is the basic R of the virus, S is the social interaction compared to normal, P is the reduction of transmission through protective measures, I is the average immunity rate. So, to lower Re, we want low S and high P and I.

We all want to come back to a society with S=1 and P=0. That means that we need to build I up to the factor where R is low. This is where herd immunity comes in. As Covid is not massively contagious (luckily it is not measles!) this rate is estimated to be around 60-70% for the current strains. Newer strains could increase that. With children, those with weak health, and some other groups cannot be vaccinated at this point, it means that most of the rest of us will need to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity.

Following the same logic, another way to reduce Re while allowing for a more normal S and P is to create cohorts where I is high. This is where the vaccine passport comes in. If we can make sure that there is herd immunity in a room, we can skip our masks and have fun. But this means that we cannot allow unvaccinated people in. It is not about the rights of the unvaccinated, it’s about the right of the vaccinated to enjoy life with a risk they deem reasonable.

Again, the rule on public health measures, it is not about ME or YOU, it’s about US.

I was planning to write more on how our view on vaccines is a result of the privilege of not experiencing massive childhood mortality rates for more than a generation, but this post is too long already.

Nothing to do now but sit back and watch the show.