Trihexagonal,
My apologies, you seem to be in very good health and obviously had taken a few vaccines in the past. You sound like someone (my nephew for one) of a younger generation that does not believe in vaccines. One of my friends that is a few years older then you is hesitant to get the vaccine. He would rather stay at home and not then travel abroad to see his children in another country. I've been to all 4 corners of the globe and have followed the travel recommendations for disease prevention. Taking another vaccine shot is just not a big deal.

Just first person noted fully vaccinated which contracted virus. We were lucky here: person is TV show host. This is why it was noticed it contracted virus. So vaccinated person can contract virus and transmit it. Seems idea no masks for vaccinated serves only to stigmatize people who refused vaccination.

Yes igadoter, it has already been noted that A) There is something like 1-2% ineffectiveness rate in the best vaccines and B) Some vaccines aren't any more effective than water. Which did this person get?

The point was made here by a respected medical professional many years ago that if people are healthy, in most cases they will get a disease, build up their own immunity, and get over it. I wouldn't say that about Covid - it would probably give me an amount of trouble.

Obviously, some diseases are not to be taken lightly, but I worry about the rush to vaccinate generally for diseases that can be taken lightly. I had whooping cough as a kid for 3 days, and cannot see the need for a vaccine where we can take folks as generally healthy. Malaria, Covid, Ebola are obviously different animnals.

Point is that dividing world in half - from one side vaccinated from other those not - is wrong policy. It is not about security to pressure those who prefer to not take vaccine to change mind. Now seems there is conflict in USA between officials and nurses - about removing restrictions for people vaccinated. So people are so focused on forcing to get vaccine that they are willing to put at risk the safety of us all. They behave like fanatics. They repeat all day long vaccine, vaccine, etc. Here there is academic, scientists who is proposing police hour for people who didn't take vaccine. Method of pressure are bullying, privileges for vaccinated, stigmatization for those who are not. It has nothing to do with reason, good judgment anymore. Situation where person vaccinated gets infection and transmit virus, says that it is not time to easy restrictions. Virus will start to spread again very fast. Soon we will have again a surge in infections number.

AFAIK India, for example, is still surging and the US is dropping quickly and approaching the 70% tipping point for herd immunity, so we shall see, won't we?

Just FTR the little town I grew up in is today unrecognizable from a massive increase in population. I recall when the US was 150 million people. Today it has more than doubled and similar increases are global. We are packed so tightly that the level of interaction has increased so much that we are no longer just individuals. We do have shared responsibility here on "Spaceship Earth".

Of course, we'll see. Who says surge of infections will be tomorrow? My own estimate says new wave will be here on border June/July. Perhaps even faster if it will be virus strain from India.

Such general argument is no good cause can be applied to all our activities : car driving, using gas - this is unclean energy and you are supposed to be responsible - so buy electric or stop using. Let us stick to vaccines only.

I think enorbet's just changing hobby horses:rolleyes: … I've been guilty of it myself, and the climate is one of them certainly.

Back on topic, it appears much of the anti-vaxx stuff in social media can be traced to just 12 people. There are doctors of good reputation with convincing and different arguments against the currently line of thought. It's strange to see evidence of "Thought Police" (for or against) in Western democracies.

I'm glad to say I live in such a place; you will get nagged, but your rights won't suffer; your freedoms, however, just might, especially as the place opens up.

I'm not so sure about that! It seems to me that these days, the thought police are very active. Express an unpopular opinion and you get trolled to death on social media. If you are employed, they'll start a blackmail campaign against your employer to get them to sack you. If you have any kind of expertise, you will suddenly find that no one wants to publish your books or let you talk to meetings. You get cancelled and become an unperson.

Old people like me can speak their minds because no one cares what we say anyway. But if you're young, you have to toe the party line.

Mind you, I still think anti-vaxxers are daft, but a lot of ideas that are becoming forbidden territory now are not daft at all.

Cancel culture.

Not only that, "they" attempt to destroy your livelihood, and actually physically harm you, like you just posted. I keep looking for the day when "they" attempt to remove your children from you if you don't agree with "them" But, Scotland has done that for years. They have removed children from homes that the state does not approve of. The US has done a little bit of that too.

Sure, you don't have any small kids that "they" can take away.

Or at least maybe not quite as knowledgeable as they could be. But they are also right, it is not known what the long term effects of covid vaccine is. There have been no long term trials/studies. And this is a new type of vaccine.

India has already passed the peak, it looks like (there's always a possibility of incorrect data gathering, of course).

You think there will be another surge in the summer? That's a pretty bold prediction. We'll find out quite soon. June is in 2 weeks...

No I wasn't changing up, just making a general analogy. The point of civic responsibility is that one should ideally consider the tradeoff in not accepting a vaccine with as nasty a virus as is Covid. YOUR immune system might be potent enough to minimize it's effects on YOU, but not necessarily everyone else.

BTW It's already been demonstrated/confirmed that effective brands of vaccine that stop the earlier variant altogether for most people also substantially reduce the seriousness of variant infection. This is an advantage especially prominent in mRNA-based vaccines. The ability to create and provide a simple booster to deal with variants is improved by the success of the initial ones.

It might be a wee bit soon to assume a minor drop in a very small time frame is indicative of continued reduction.

https://epidemic-stats.com/coronavirus/india

Note the amounts and times. However I sincerely hope you are right and I'm just overly cautious.

My estimate is that infections return per 45-60 days period. Due to existence old strains and appearance new ones. And it seems virus mutates fast particularly in large densely populated areas. USA should soon develop its own deadly strain. They were Brazil, South-Africa, India strains - there will be USA strain. Virus don't need billion of people infected - 50 people developing new strain are completely enough. In densely populated areas it then spreads very fast. That 1% - 2% vaccine ineffectivnes is completely enough for virus to survive, mutate, spread out. All this pandemia started from very small number of people - just think about this. More mutations more questions how effective are vaccines. We'll see. My point is we dont have enough data for any decisive conclusions. Lockdowns are harming economy - there is a hope vaccination will help. But no matter vaccination is only partial solution. Besides I am still worry about possible strain harmful particularly for children. There is something strange that this virus is more dangerous for adults than children. Intuitively something is not right here.