That's extremely encouraging to see that. You hear all about the doom and gloom and various feckups with different age groups - anecdotal evidence, there's too much "reporting" by the irish media lately, and not enough actual journalism.
Good on you. My coping mechanism in darkest January was wallpapering the downstairs jacks. Can’t beat an aul project to keep life interesting. Even better when you’re outdoors.That's extremely encouraging to see that. You hear all about the doom and gloom and various feckups with different age groups - anecdotal evidence, there's too much "reporting" by the irish media lately, and not enough actual journalism.
Mentally I'm probably coping better than most so I can probably wait it out a while before totally losing the head, even have a gardening project to keep me busy
I'm ripping up the entire back garden to put in proper drains. We moved into a new build and the builders put in really compacted soil with shitty drainage and no natural run off. Found the manhole down the side, and found a pipe that "looked" like it came from the grass, so dug up an experiment hole at the path and found the end of the pipe. Going to put a few french-like drains to connect up to it I think.
Thanks, mate. I wish you all the best as well. Still got a few days to decide. So who knows, maybe I will just white knuckle it. Anyway, take care.
To reverse that, if you aren't at risk and don't get the vaccine you may get it and get no side effects to the virus like you say. That doesn't stop you walking into a supermarket and unknowingly infecting someone who is at risk who gets serious issues.
Holy shit. That’s a proper project. Enjoy!
I absolutely understand your misgivings. If you have health anxiety, it's very difficult and people don't understand the extent to which it affects a person. If it helps, I'm 62, I have anxiety, auto-immune disorders and a previous serious reaction to a vaccination. I've been to see a neurologist in Italy and he said the risk to me of Covid is in all likelihood greater than the risk of me having another serious reaction. My older sister who has a similar medical history, has been to see an endocrinologist in the UK (she also has many allergies), and he's given a similar assessment.
Thank you for the kind words, its very much appreciated. Ill keep my fingers crossed for you and your sister that it all goes smoothly when the time comes.
First thing that might help how you think about this is that it is not a drug and vaccines are not actual live viruses. Some use parts of deactivated viruses but many like Pfizer don't even do that. They can't give you the disease. So the short lived side effects aren't disease or illness (or liquid death) but just the body reacting naturally really really well.
Because the data isn't there yet. But it will be this year and kids will then likely be immunised in most countries.
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
Its a genuine travesty and the Western countries look absolutely disgusting. Canada (and I think NZ) drawing doses from the Covax pool is a particular low.
Even at a purely self-interested level it’s absurd to stockpile vaccines. We can vaccinate 100% of our citizens and still end up in lockdown again, this time next year, if a vaccine resistant “Balkan strain” hits our shores in December.
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
Exactly. We're already seeing this to some extent with the South African variant and seemingly reduced efficacy of all? the major vaccine candidates against it.
Sounds good. A race horse would struggle in my current “grass”
That little crappy piece of paper is surely not going to act as the vaccine passport.
I've had the Pfizer one, as has my wife and one of my mates. My 2 elderly next door neighbours too. Only side effect the 5 of us experienced is a bit of a tender arm for about 24hrs.
Apparently so.
yup day 2 after the same jab here, tenderness has pretty much gone.
100% agree it absolutely should be personal choice, and noone should be made to feel a dick for opting out. I've had it, my wife has had it. I'm not sure how I'd feel about my 5yr old having it.
Interesting. I work with a few people in Belarus and they haven't had it yet. Said they're waiting for some Russian trials, or something.
Unless you are saying that old people develop new mutations more easily (I don’t know), then it shouldn't really matter for the likelihood of new variants.
I wasn’t even thinking about ages tbh. Just the risk of allowing the virus to bounce around between millions of unvaccinated people in other countries. Especially if those countries do have a very small % of vaccinated people.
India has been helping out the Caribbean as well. The vaccine I had this week was from India. We can truly see how much the “leaders of the free world” care about anyone besides themselves, as if we didn’t already know.
You really think those countries are helping you out of the goodness of their hearts?
I don’t think there is much, if any difference whether 70% of western people are vaccinated and 5% elsewhere. Or 15% everywhere. This just from a mutation point of view.
Theyre not, but some help is better than the no help that we’ve been getting from other countries.
Western nations have been very badly hit because of their old populations and global interconnectivity. Their governments are also democratically accountable so need to serve their own populations first.
Capitalism at its best.
Covid isn’t a problem isolated to any one single country. This same global inter connectivity will still cripple them if every one of their people are vaccinated, but all the other countries they do business with are still suffering from Covid. Lest we forget these western nations are as rich as they are off the back of exploitation of poorer nations, which aren’t as important as their own populations, as you say.
Every time it replicates there’s a chance of mutation. The more viral transmission the higher the chance of a new variant emerging which has some sort of evolutionary benefit (e.g. vaccine resistance). Surely it’s just a number game? The lower the % vaccinated, the more viral transmission = more mutations.
We don't have enough vaccines to really have an effect world-wide. Doesn't really matter which way you cut the cake if it is too small. But we are nearing semantics territory.
I don’t disagree with anything you say. From a cynical and pragmatic viewpoint I do think Western nations are right to vaccinate their population first though. Once the numbers are down track and trace can be more effective and they can close the borders to foreign nations with dangerous variants etc.
