Okay, this will likely tick off everyone. I kind of want to vent about this, anyway.
1. Doctors know what’s in vaccines. You can, too. The ingredients in the COVID vaccines, at least in the US, are known, listed, and easy to find.
2. All vaccines are known to produce reactions, sometimes serious. For most the risk is slight, and for all vaccination programs the risk of reactions is offset by the risk of mortality from the disease itself.
3. Some reported serious side effects of the COVID vaccine were also reported from the disease itself. That has me thinking both are related to immune system response. So it could be get the vaccine and risk the reaction or get COVID and risk the same reaction.
4. Some vaccines seemed to have higher incidents of reaction, but also had a higher percentage of the spike protein than others. Check out the studies of the time. This led to some, but not all, vaccines being curtailed in some countries.
FWIW, I’m one of those who doesn’t have a reaction other than a sore arm. It makes my wife feel tired and have a low grade fever. I know someone who had a reaction so strong that they won’t take it again.
5. The initial mortality estimates were staggering. This was a virus humanity hadn’t seen before and we were in uncharted territory. I did a back-of-the-envelope estimate at the start of the pandemic, basing it on the Spanish Flu pandemic, and it was sobering. OTOH, there was that case of COVID on that cruise ship, and that seemed hopeful.
6. The first vaccine, when COVID was rougher, does seem to have saved lives. I knew someone who worked in gathering health information and had heard enough to trust their numbers. What convinced me and my wife to get the vaccine was that there was a significant drop in mortality from COVID in our demographic among the vaccinated as compared to the vaccinated. Given my reaction to Omicron, and our reaction to the strain last year, maybe we wouldn’t have died from it, anyway, but why roll that dice? The risk of death was higher than the risk of an adverse reaction.
FWIW, when I had Omicron, the vaccine was still for the first strain. The doctor who saw me was skeptical about how well it protected from Omicron, as it hadn’t been updated. The current vaccine, like the annual flu vaccine, is updated to the current strains.
I got an updated vaccine in the fall last year because I didn’t like the taste the medication left in my mouth; wanted to see if I’d have a reaction this time (I didn’t); and wanted to see if it gave me protection (it seems to have). The issue of reaction was to see what it would do before my wife took it. Interestingly, she had the same mild reaction that she did after getting the initial second shot.
7. Yes, the virus has mutated to milder strains. What it is now isn’t what it was initially. But when my wife and I last had it last year, she was in an examination room across the hall from a woman who also had it, and that poor woman had breathing difficulties, apparently from the virus. We were almost asymptomatic.
FWIW, I know some who died who had pre-existing conditions. I don’t know if they would have died had they contracted the flu but they did catch COVID and die. One of them was an aunt in hospice. OTOH, another aunt, close to 100, contracted it and it didn’t do her worse than a cold. For that matter, I knew a man younger than myself and who was in better health, but died from the flu. Everyone’s different.
8. When I had Omicron, the doctor, while weaning an N95 mask, hinted at some things that some have dismissed as possible treatments. I turned down a proven treatment at the time on the grounds that the availability was limited, my symptoms weren’t severe, and there were those who needed it worse than me. Still wouldn’t try some of the things recommended then, but keep in mind that now there’s medication that can be prescribed for it. Had we had the now common treatment for COVID, I think he would have gone with that.
Note: When the pandemic started, bought an oxygen meter. Have used it with both bouts of COVID, as did my wife. Our oxygen levels never dropped. That can happen with COVID.
9. I suspect what we weren’t told was that the quick test available at the time wasn’t necessarily reliable, which is why even those who recovered from COVID were told to get the vaccine. That had me speculating that maybe some who were thought to have had COVID didn’t and some who did weren’t diagnosed with it. Just speculation on my part.
10. The US response was “eat up” with politics. Some of it was a reflexive falling back on what was done in a natural disaster but which in some cases were redundant or not needed. One municipality banned large gatherings, which it also did during the Spanish Flu, but also enacted a curfew. There were no reports of COVID viruses arrested for being out after hours.
The CDC first advised not masking, not only because of the limited supply, but also because people wouldn’t handle them properly. That’s washing hands or using hand sanitizer before putting them on, fitting them properly, then leaving them alone and not constantly fiddling with them. The initial thought of the CDC was that people would have a higher risk of bringing contaminated hands to the nose and eye area and in improperly wearing masks. Then, after public and political outcry, the CDC reversed itself and recommended masking. At the time I anticipated a public health campaign stressing how to properly wear and handle masks. Saw some online, but no TV spots or posters. So it was that we had people wearing masks with their noses uncovered and people constantly fiddling with the things, or laying them down on surfaces, and sometimes putting them back on.
Large gatherings tended to spread the virus. Albany, Georgia, had an early outbreak tied to one, possibly, two, funerals. But some large gatherings were encouraged while others were frowned upon. Would’t you know it: those encouraged tended to be “liberal” and those frowned upon tended to be conservative. Curious thing, that.
The same with what was deemed “missinformation.” Odd thing: what was deemed “missinformation” seemed to depend more on who said something than what was actually said. On occasion, what was actually said was distorted at least once. That was curious, too.
Lest we forget, thinking for yourself was discouraged and mocked. Any official pronouncement was called “following the science” even as the science was changing. Such as the spread of COVID in NY City despite the shutdowns, likely due to transportation and people buying necessities. That tended to be ignored. Anyone who said “Wait a minute” and pointed such out was castigated as spreading “missinformation.” The real thing going on was daring to question authority, and authority didn’t like that at all.
This lead to theater of the absurd situations such as church congregations prevented from driving to church and staying in their cars, listening to the sermon on a low wattage FM transmitter. That was because of the rule prohibiting large gatherings, even though worshipers were isolated. Was in a situation where I was with someone getting blood work and there was another person there, and all three of us were told to come inside. Then another nurse told us we had to go back out. Why? For a fever assessment. Let’s see...we had already been exposed to each other (while properly masked, of course), so there was no real point in making us go back out. Take our temperature there, and make sure new arrivals are assessed outside. But assessment outside was the rule, and following the rule was more important than common sense. We went out, was accessed there, then let back in, where we were before. Such were the times. But I guess it made the nurse happy.