COVID vaccines

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Glad I could help.

There's very few severe side effects within all vaccines being given at this point.

Anaphylaxis (almost always treatable and cureable through epinephrine) occurs in approximately 1 out of 100,000 vaccine recipients.

Had my second vaccine.My arm hurt quite severely for 24 hours, no fever, joints ached, not so bad. Research in Tel Ha Shomer (Sheba) Hospital finds that antibodies elevate to 98% immunity 7days after the second shot. They are anticipating more mutations but so far Pfizer is effective for the British and South African mutations. The British mutation is so highly infectious, it has become the dominant strain, that we are extending our lock down for another 10 days. 10,000 new daily infections in a population of 8 million.

Congrats on the second dose!

Isn't the UK population about 66 million?

If you're in your late twenties, and are reluctant to take the vaccine, in fact flat out refuse to play around with a experimental less than a year worth of preliminary trial data vaccine, does that mean you might be afflicted with mild paranoid peronality disorder or is that a fair risk assessment calculation, given the 1% chance of you dying from it. My body, my choice right?

I should have taken that job in Tel Aviv when I had the chance. It may be another month or more before I get my vaccination, and I am 63 years old with two recent heart attacks!

Teach is from Israel.

The UK population is about 68 million.

Although I'm a bit dubious of the vaccine, I'm not so concerned about it that I would tell anyone not to have it. I say, if you think you are at risk of Covid, then it's probably worth having the vaccine.

The important thing to do, is to not take seriously anything you read on Facebook. As far as I can tell, Facebook is where people spread crap.

Unfortunately, finding good information can be difficult. The 'mainstream media' have mostly been 'pro-lockdown' and tend to portray the virus as worse than it actually is, while not mentioning the repercussions of the lockdown for everyone else. In contrast, a lot of the 'alternative media' tend to be very anti-vaccine and full of conspiracy theories. My conclusion is that you cannot take anything you read too seriously.

I really hope that vaccines will be widely available soon worldwide. The concensus over here though is that the emergence of a vaccine resistant mutation of the virus is inevitable and just a matter of time. A new development: Pregnant women are being encouraged to be vaccinated, 8 pregnant women in their thirties are critically ill with Covid, one had a CSection in her second trimester but unfortunately the baby died.
Israel has agreed to exchange medical records with Pfizer, we have been told anonymously but who knows, we are an ideal demographic for research regarding adverse reactions and statistics of the vaccine and have sophisticated technology and an excellent public health system to create a reliable data base. This will I hope help other countries to be more knowledgable regarding the pros and cons of the vaccination. There are sectors/ ethnicities here which are refusing vaccination and this will ultimately defeat the whole effort to achieve herd immunity.

Good news!
Here, I don't believe we would ever achieve herd immunity. Getting the high-risk and high-risk-of-spreading (medical staff, teachers, police, retail...) groups is I think the most we can hope for with the mess of logistics we have here.
So, while I'm not against getting the shot myself, I calmly sit and wait - a mostly-physically-healthy 35yo with a lifestyle of a hermit is not worth being put before others

I'd start by checking that 1% figure.

There's a lot of people confusing deaths as a % of total population with deaths as a % of infections. Also bear in mind as the most vulnerable have been shielding, the second figure is being held artificially low.

Then maybe have a think about the shape the infection rate to death rate curve will take if the hospitals get overwhelmed.

Also ponder the degree to which existing know-how has been adapted for the new vaccines. They haven't been created from the ground up, so most of the approvals were already in place. If development in under a year is such a red flag, why is no-one screaming about the flu vaccines which are always developed in under a year?

To my mind we really need to gain control of the situation quickly, before even more serious mutations occur. Any risk from the vaccines seems insignificant in comparison.

Most pandemics eventually come to an end [generally before everyone in the world dies]. One of the factors that brings it to an end is called herd immunity. Herd immunity is related to the sum of those that were vaccinated combined with those who were infected and survived. In Los Angeles at the moment, I read that approximately one in three individuals living in the city have been infected.

California as a large state but is lagging behind in distributing the vaccines. They are currently at 0.52%. So as a rough approximation, Los Angeles has around a 34% herd immunity. I suspect that actual herd immunity is a little bit higher because COVID-19 is not the first coronavirus humans have encountered. Those that were exposed to SARS and perhaps other coronaviruses may have developed some additional resistance.

The open question is: how long the immunity lasts?
There is no herd immunity against common cold because post-infection immunity for common cold lasts only a few weeks or months. However, next infections tend to be milder.
Covid19 certainly won't kill the whole population. The vast majority of infections are mild and re-infections are likely to be even milder. If nothing else, covid is likely to ultimately end up joining the common cold and flu crowd.

I don't know about it becoming like the flu or a cold in the future. The long term neurological complications such as chronic fatigue, loss of cognitive capacity, loss of sense of taste and smell are common. We have rehab units for recovered Covid patients, they don't cover that much on the news, but people don't always return to their pre- Covid health status. That is very different from the flu virus.

I meant Covid joining the crowd of circulating viruses, people building enough immunity for it to usually have mild forms but never aquiring crowd immunity.