How should we deal with the groups who refuse to have the vaccine?

aprilrose

*By which time half a million more people will have died in the UK alone and all our businesses will have gone under. OK, let's try that then*

Businesses have already gone I am afraid . As for deaths. Death is inevitable. You cant stave it off. Its the deaths we are now going to have because we didnt take care of the economy that concern me more. Stop scaremongering over a virus whose lethality for most except the most vulnerable is around 0.01%.

Pity you didnt care about the others earlier .

Lethality? I think you've made up a word. You've certainly made up a fact. Nobody can be absolutely sure what the mortality rate of Covid-19 is, but it's nearer 0.1% of those infected than 0.01%, which is quite a difference.

Not only that, but for many people it's much higher, including many who could still expect to live for some time yet.

The question was "How should we deal with them?" My answer would be that to protect ourselves we should try to ensure that we don't have to deal with them.

Where those who have not been vaccinated will be in an enclosed space with others - a plane with the same air being recirculated for hours - the airline is protecting its passengers by asking that they all have a vaccination certificate. That has been required for ages for those going where diseases like yellow fever are prevalent (for their own safety and so that it isn't imported into this country), and it is accepted.

AprilRose I know people who have survived a stroke or a heart attack, but I don't therefore believe that there is no need for me (or them) to take medically accepted precautions against it happening.

aprilrose

*I have an underlying condition and Covid could be lethal for me*

Then in that case take the vaccine. Its your choice.

For me, the virus is not lethal. I have survived it and know my immune system will cope ( and I didnt need an ICU).

Would you mind answering my questions please? I didn't ask if you thought I should have the vaccine - I asked why you think it's OK to tell other people that their life is less valuable than yours because 'it's only lethal in a small minority'.

Interesting that you claim to have good medical reasons not to have the vaccine, but you have such a healthy immune system.

Errrmmm ... looney tunes?

aprilrose How much do you know about the immune system? It would be interesting to know why you think yours is healthy.

aprilrose It is an experimental vaccine. The trials have not been done.

You are entitled to an opinion, but you have to understand that your opinion isn't based on facts. The above claims are totally false.

I have refrained from speaking in personal terms generally here because it is not what was asked. The question was " What is to be done with those who wont take the vaccine".

The point is, what what is it you want done - have them sent off to concentration camps? Put a yellow sticker on them? Lock them up at home?

There are many reasons someone may not choose to have a vaccine, especially when it is new.

There are the wait and see people.
There are those, like me who need to wait and see because although I can get over the virus with my healthy immune system I have a history of reactions to vaccines. I am more likely to die from a vaccine than from the virus.
Then there are those who are against vaccines generally for many reasons from religious to just being non believers in western medicine.

But here you lump them all into conspiracy theorists and demand draconian measures against them by some implicit need to sanction ( the question is based on that).

Would you force someone who has an allergy to penicillin to take it? Or someone with a nut allergy to eat nuts?

By deinition I expect, as with everything, there will be a few who cannot or will not take the vaccine. That number is likely to be very low.

It seems to me to be making a mountain out of a ole hill to demand everyone has to take a vaccine or be somehow limited in their lives, locked up or similarly sanctioned.

If you are protected with your jab, they arent bothering you.

We all have to make choices and decisions for our own health and for ourselves as individuals. Besides , the last time I looked, this country still held the the ECRH and the Nuremberg codes which allowed those choices as basic rights.

If you want the vaccine, no one is stopping you taking it. It is being offered to all. But panic about those not taking it and threads like may well end up with some looney tune going out and attacking those who are not taking the vaccine - even though those people may ( like me) have good medical reasons for not taking the jab.

But in many cases mumps and measles are not lethal, yet we are (on the whole) happy to be vaccinated against these conditions. I wonder why covid is seen as different. I feel the same about the whole debate over which vaccine we receive, I received my flu injection the other day, no idea of the name of the vaccine or how long it took to develop. Not a clue. But most people receive it without a second thought. Presumably the whole trauma of what we have experienced has pushed some people to think differently.

I have an underlying condition and Covid could be lethal for me

Then in that case take the vaccine. Its your choice.

For me, the virus is not lethal. I have survived it and know my immune system will cope ( and I didnt need an ICU).

NHS on Covid19 vaccine (Page last reviewed: 22 February 2021, Next review due: 8 March 2021 )

How safe is the COVID-19 vaccine?

The vaccines approved for use in the UK have met strict standards of safety, quality and effectiveness set out by the independent Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Any coronavirus vaccine that is approved must go through all the clinical trials and safety checks all other licensed medicines go through. The MHRA follows international standards of safety.

Other vaccines are being developed. They will only be available on the NHS once they have been thoroughly tested to make sure they are safe and effective.

So far, millions of people have been given a COVID-19 vaccine and reports of serious side effects, such as allergic reactions, have been very rare. No long-term complications have been reported.
www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/coronavirus-vaccine/

Good grief. The vaccine has been developed over many years. It was just the very last part that had to be worked on as a matter of urgency to save millions of lives. I for one am going to ignore aprilrose because there’s no point in trying to speak in a rational way with someone that is not only irrational but downright dangerous.

Aprilrose Where you seem to be going wrong is in the idea that this virus is any more lethal than any other
We don’t know what the case fatality rate is at this point, and possibly never will.
But it’s not the whole story. Infectivity matters too.
A virus may have a relatively high case fatality rate but if it doesn’t manage to infect a lot of people it will have a lower impact than one which has a low case fatality rate but infects a great many people.
And mortality isn’t the whole story.
The phenomenon of Long Covid is real and many people have survived but with permanent, life-changing damage to internal organs and prolonged, debilitating fatigue.

aprilrose

It is an experimental vaccine. The trials have not been done. It is not being offered as a licenced vaccine but as one authorised under emergency powers ( which tells you it is experimental - it has not gone through all its testing stages and been found safe). The fact too that the pharma companies have been indemnified so no one can sue them for adverse reactions which are life changing or lead to death of loved ones tells you a lot.

I have no truck with anyone wanting to take such a vaccine but by definition it has to be a choice. We know the virus is only lethal in those with underlying conditions and all others have around a 99.8% chance of surviving and having no side effects from the virus itself ( not so with the vaccine).

I have an underlying condition and Covid could be lethal for me - could you tell me in what way my life is of less value than yours anyone else's?

I work, I pay tax, I am a contributing member of society - in what way can you rationalise that I should be sacrificed to something that can have it's risk reduced with a vaccination?

Third and finally - do you have direct experience of how vaccines are developed and how clinical trials are carried out and can you interpret the data accurately because you're fully conversant with the methodologies and language used?

Thought not.

Choose not have the vaccine by all means, but please don't peddle dangerous rubbish to others, or suggest that any one persons life has less value than another.

surely all medication is about staving off death isn’t it

All medications also carry risk. You need to make the risk assessment. For some people the vaccine might be more dangerous than the illness.

Thats why it needs to be a choice and why some people need to re think their policy of " doing something" with those who refuse the vaccine.

Just for the record here I am not an anti Vaxxer. I have had many vaccines in my life. I have had my child vaccinated. I have no problem with vaccines generally.

What a co-incidence!

It is indeed a coincidence. I have never heard of the site you talk about. But if you need to try and discredit my views in some way by considering them " conspiracy theories", then I guess I am over the target. The flack is greatest when you are over the target.

So, deep inside , you know I have a point. QED

So, April rose. What are people supposed to do if they have covid. Just go into work and infect everyone around them as if they’ve just got a cold? I don’t really understand your reasoning I’m afraid.

Well, that is in fact all a coronavirus is , a cold virus. One of several types of virus that cause a cold. Corona virus in the plural generally are respiratory ( chest) infections.

As I said, even this Covid 19 is essentially non lethal for most people. However, I have always been an advocate of the view that if you have a cold you should be home in bed or on the sofa with a duvet, not in work. I know the work ethic of the modern workplace sometimes makes that hard.

But I would say, if ill stay home. Same as anything else.

Where you seem to be going wrong is in the idea that this virus is any more lethal than any other. For those who are vulnerable it is a nasty illness and death may follow ( as it can do with influenza and pneumonia too, but no one makes the whole country stay home for influenza do they?)

The problem is that there has been an over hype and an over reaction and now too many people are running scared and of course the media and a weak government are not helping.

Your answer it would seem ( since you ask me the question) is that we lock up all the healthy , young and virus resistant, and possibly compromise their immune systems as well as completely devestate the economy and shut down all businesses and other areas of work to protect a few vulnerable people who could just as well be protected by ensuing their own safety and making their own risk assessments.

If you look at the risk assessment now it is looking as if more people may have been made ill , terminally so or even died as a result of shutting everyone up than would have died from the virus itself.

In fact, if I recall , all of this was three weeks to protect the NHS, not even to protect people.

So, yes. I would say go to work, get on with life because one thing is certain , at the end of life is death. That cannot be changed.

The ANH's vaccine-denying, conspiracy-theory website linked to above has a big splash about Huxley on the front page. What a co-incidence!

aprilrose using your analogy, surely all medication is about staving off death isn’t it? If you think it’s completely pointless to administer any drugs to anybody on the basis that we are all going to die anyway, of course you are entitled to your opinion.

Aprilrose You can stave off death? There is only one certainty in life and that is we all die. There is no stopping that. You obviously think you are immortal or the vaccine will make you so?
Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I don’t think I’m immortal.
My point is that millions of people in this country and elsewhere are staving off the inevitable by their lifestyle choices and by managing long term conditions with medication.
Otherwise we would all die in our 30’s like cavemen did.
As far as the pandemic goes, I could well have died had I not followed the scientific advice about social distancing and I’m glad to say I’ve protected myself and other people further by having the vaccine.

You can stave off death? There is only one certainty in life and that is we all die. There is no stopping that. You obviously think you are immortal or the vaccine will make you so?

Goodness me. Oh brave new world that has such people in it. ( Huxley.)

The vaccine has been in development less than a year. How can long term trials of two or three years have been done? Your statement is illogical and simply wrong.

Aprilrose The trials have not been done
Yes, they have. As has been stated many times on these threads, it is the bureaucratic stages which have been green-lighted.

Death is inevitable. You cant stave it off
Of course you can. That’s what the vaccine is for. Sadly too late for the relatively young, healthy people who have died before their time because of Covid.

Stop peddling your dangerous nonsense.