No, that isn't true!

Exactly! This article deals very well with the Covid misinformation.

Good article. BUT all the facts in the world won't convince some, in fact may well turn the off more. There has to be a way of making them willing to have the vaccine.

Thanks for that Elegran. I must forward it to my friend who has advised me that it will alter my DNA and that it has been tested on members of the British Army, several of whom have died!!

But these people don't believe these are FACTS!

That's the problem

I have a lovely friend. Known her for 50+ years. Intelligent, well educated, professional blah blah blah

But when it comes to this vaccine she is utterly convinced about all the weird theories.

She refuses to have the vaccination.

I don't think anyone or anything would convince her to change her mind

www.statnews.com/2020/08/31/with-science-and-scripture-a-baltimore-pastor-is-fighting-covid-19-vaccine-skepticism/

www.statnews.com/2020/09/09/advancing-covid-19-vaccine-means-countering-science-denial/
"To address denial, advocates of vaccination need to do more than treat denial as stemming from an information deficit, a strategy that is often ineffective. They will need to untangle the partisan threads that have characterized pandemic policymaking to date. When vaccination is made partisan, the truth of the “facts” will matter less to many people than whether those “facts” support their partisan leanings.

Overcoming science denial requires addressing its emotional underpinnings, not its justifications. This means listening to people’s concerns, both legitimate and illegitimate, and addressing them with patience and kindness. Russia has already approved a vaccine tested on just 76 people, stoking concerns from Western scientists not only that the approval is premature, but that it could further undermine trust in the approval process."

As DH says 'they have made up their minds, don't confuse them with facts.'

I am an advocate of vaccination but I have doubts about the safety and efficacy of this rushed out vaccine. When billions of dollars are in place for the company that first produces a successful vaccine, I am not sure that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth has prevailed. I do not prescribe to conspiracy theories or any such thing but I do not understand how companies have been able to quickly produce a vaccine for a virus that mutates as I have read this one has. After all, the common cold mutates and they have not been able to control that one.

I sincerely hope that sceptical folks don't write off the vaccine as just being more Bojo bluster.
I am sick of his gung-ho warmongering metaphors. Bugles blowing, cavalry coming over the hill etc ad nauseam!

However, I have listened to Nicola Sturgeon's clear and reasonable updates. Her sense of relief today, tempered with cautious optimism, was far more reassuring than all the Bojo bluster.

BUT I believe I am not alone in hoping that the brexit fiasco won't force delays on the specialist lorries with their precious cargo.

Bluebellwould have a look at the thread on the safety of the vaccine started by kathyd. Lots of information there in the link that she has posted.

Not rushed, expedited, and the Oxford vaccine producers have said they won't take a profit until the pandemic is over, plus they are donating some to developing countries. As for the cold - well we don't have a couple of million people a year worldwide dying every year from the cold. So there hasn't been the urgency to develop a vaccine.

bluebellwould Corona viruses are commonplace. COVID is only one and, as I understand, has not mutated much, so it is fairly easy to develop a vaccine for that particular coronavirus.

The term 'colds' covers over 200 different viruses and that means, it may be possible to develop a vaccine for one, but developing a vaccine effective against 200 in one jab is many, many more times more difficult that developing a vaccine for one virus.

I'm on Twitter and there was a clear and supportive tweet* yesterday about having the vaccine from Professor Brian Cox. If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me ...

*and others who know their stuff too.

It is a credit to today's epidemiologists that the vaccine has been made so quickly. Also it is a truly international effort.
It was helped by the work done when the MERS and SARS viruses appeared a few years ago, which sarted the work. Those never erupted globally, so we have tended to forget them. Covid-19 spread fast, and is liable to mutate, so let's not forget it will be around quite a time still.
And those who refuse the vaccine will go on being vulnerable.

When I watched this clip my first thought was, good grief, how can people be so gullible? What crazy conspiracy theories. However, as the Flat Earth Society and Holocaust deniers, to name just 2 show us, there are plenty around who will take it all in as gospel truth. They are entitled to their opinions, of course, but we have to fight this virus. Boris is not announcing this morning that Covid-19 has gone, it isn't going to go of it's own accord. So unless we want to live as we have for the past months we must take steps to overcome it.

Oh Bluebellwould this has not been “rushed out” in the sense of corners being cut, but in the same way that blue lights and sirens clear the way for ambulances through traffic .
Why are you so reluctant to believe the facts ?
The bonkers conspiracy theories belong with the Flat Earth society. We are living in desperate times and we have been fortunate enough to have scientists and facilities to enable us to fight back.

www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi25O6fvbHtAhUKVBUIHdfGD-QQFjABegQIBhAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fprogrammes%2Fm000py6s&usg=AOvVaw3_ZJZCXavM5M22c0StXVSm
Tim Hartford’s Radio 4 series on How to Vaccinate the World has been informative and reassuring - and, for non-scientists, very clear and easy to understand.

Oh how I agree with you elegran! I would like to know what those opposed to the vaccine would see as a better/alternative course of action? Just remain in our current half a life situation for ever with the economy and social cohesion failing? Condemn our grandchildren to a blighted life of interrupted education and limited recreational facilities? I don’t think that’s a future I would like so I’m first in the queue for the vaccine. We cannot eliminate risk from our lives altogether, it’s always a risk/benefit analysis when it comes to decisions like this. People need to inform themselves with the actual facts from reputable sources, not as someone has said, from Big Davey on Facebook!

I listened to a scientist on local radio this morning who explained why this vaccine has been developed so quickly.

No safety precautions or tests have been missed but basically a lot of red tape and bureaucracy has been put aside. What she said was we shouldn't be asking why this vaccine has been approved so quickly but why other vaccines take so long to be approved

Love the reaction across europe,well my friends in Europe ,to Hancock and co taking all the credit for a vaccine developed in Germany and made in Belgium.Its not particularly kind lets say !!Also the claim it only got done quickly because of Brexit..IF anyone believes all the nonsense then the people south of the Scottish border are well and truly screwed .....we never believe anything they say .

I think some people having learned very little science in school, then buried their heads in the sand and assume nothing ever changes or develops.

Most of us, when children, wrote letters, walked to the post box, posted and hoped it would arrive the next dayNow we dash off an emal, which arrives in seconds. Does that make the email and content more suspicious because it isn't on paper and arrived so quickly.

Scientific and technical advances have had the same effect on scientific research. Computers can anaylse data in seconds that previously took months, analytical equipment can look at data, see viruses in enormous detail. We understand their DNA of host and victim. Products can be produced immensely quickly using different equqipment and using new techniques.

A vaccine against Ebola, in fact several vaccines against Edola were developed very quickly, I think in under a year. It has been done once, why shouldn't it be done again?

Excellent post M0nica
Thank you for putting it so well.