Coronavirus and You - Page 315

On December 22 2020 09:13 m4ini wrote:


If the vaccine works as it's supposed to, it won't prevent the spreading of the virus - it prevents the virus from attacking you. There's no definitive answer, but chances are that you can spread it just as easily.

In regards to something that i initially thought was a no-brainer..

Give it to old people first. Not because of moral reasons, but one simple thing. If you vaccinate the health staff first, and something unforeseen goes wrong - which is entirely possible considering it's the first vaccine of its kind..

It sounds mean, but i'd rather see the vaccine going wrong in old people, than in our main line of defence. Hospitals everywhere getting stretched for resources, you can't afford single nurses/doctors falling ill, let alone all, half, or a quarter of them due to unforeseen consequences.

I'm a bit torn on that one.



Correct.

The reality is though that health staff with enough resources doesn't get infected, or at least very rarely gets infected (was different early in the pandemic). I'd argue that for a well trained/equipped nurse/doc, the chances of infection are close to nil - whereas the vaccine is the great unknown.

Sidenote, i don't argue against the vaccine. I just don't think anymore that the health staff getting it first is the absolute correct step.

On December 22 2020 12:28 m4ini wrote:


I'm not from the medical field either, but i've read into how the vaccine works - it's different than your normal flu-vaccine.

A normal vaccine works by injecting a dormant/weak/deactivated germ into your body, to trigger an immune response. The new covid vaccine is an mRNA vaccine - it doesn't contain the virus itself in any shape or form. I don't know exactly how it works, but it teaches your cells to make a certain protein, which then triggers the immune response.

In this case, the instruction is to make the spike protein that Covid19 is using to invade your cells - so our immune system gets primed to that particular part of the virus, its "weapon".

We don't know how well the vaccine works for asymptomatic cases. Indeed, even the Pfizer CEO is on record saying "he doesn't know" whether or not the vaccine curbs transmission.



Care to explain what that's supposed to mean? No one has experience with mRNA vaccines and their potential downfalls. If they still take precautions after they vaccinate and prevent spread through that, they didn't need the vaccine first anyway. We don't know if asymptomatic infections still are transmittable. That means that nothing changes for frontline workers - except potential side effects that prevent them from going to work.

I'm not saying that my thought is the end all, but "they know what to do" is an incredibly stupid argument. Of course they're still taking precautions, they won't change their current behaviour at all in fact.

There's two ways. Either way won't change their behaviour, or the safety of others in the hospital - most people in hospitals don't get Covid from the nurse, but from constantly touching their face in a building that's full of Covid19, potentially on any guard rail, door, faucet that you touch.

Another thing is: you don't get data if you vaccinate healthcare staff first. The first and most important thing after the rollout of the vaccine is observation whether or not you can still transmit the virus. If you vaccinate people who don't spread it even unvaccinated, you either get no, or worse, wrong data - potentially leading to complacency, having vaccinated people run into care homes, murdering half of the inhabitants.

Healthcare staff being first was the first thing that sprung to my mind as well - because "obviously" you would vaccinate them first. But once you remember that we're talking about injecting our healthcare workers with an entirely new thing, potentially leading to side effects/problems, in a time where every nurse is needed (and general hospital admissions go up due to being winter and stuff) - i don't know. You can replace an average office worker, you can't replace a healthcare worker (or rather, not quickly).

Put this way. Watched "The Martian"? Do you think that if he found a syringe with "experimental DNA juice to potentially make potatoes immune to vacuum", he'd injected his only means of survival?

I wouldn't. I would grow the potatoes the way i know works, because if the DNA juice fails and my potatoes die - i die.

On December 22 2020 16:54 Sirion wrote:

This is not quite true. What you describe is sterilizing immunity, which the vaccines might not achieve(we do not know). That means vaccinated people might still get infected, and can be infectious themselves. Presumably at a reduced level, both in term of infectiousness and in terms of number of days when such a person is infectious. In particular vulnerable people who cannot be vaccinated still need to be careful.