My GF and I were talking about vaccines and COVID, mainly doubts about them. We both got the vaccine pretty quick. A lot of the talk was about how a healthy skepticism of the profit driven US healthcare system leaves room for doubt. It's not like the vaccine made us any less sick or prevented us from catching it, or transmitting it. So we were asking ourselves what was the point?

Ultimately we landed at a pretty logical conclusion which is that the widespread vaccine seemed to ultimately drop the total COVID rate down and we seem to catch some variant of it similar to the flu once a year now. My sister works in healthcare and she usually knows when COVID is making the rounds. I don't find myself leaning antivaxx. I am skeptical of the Trump and Biden administrations both though in the USA. It's all too odd how willing people are to put their faith into the vaccine with literally zero doubts.

[–] Strykker@programming.dev 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

It's not odd at all that people are willing to take the vaccines. Hundreds of doctors and scientists have been involved in the process of determining how viruses work, how the body fights them how we can use that to improve the bodies response and then how to safely package that for delivery to every person in the country.

There is no blind faith here except for that of doubters, just literal thousands of hours of dedication and science.

[–] spaphy@lemmy.ml -2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So you're telling me that a vaccine for a sickness with basically 1 year R&D to production turnaround time doesn't cause you to think twice, when a regular prescription can have side effects and need to be changed?

Think of any experience you've had with anti depressants or reoccurring drug as a prescription: it's frequent that people have these changed out because of the adverse side effects or lack of effectiveness. The joke used to be that a commercial for medication would quickly read out side effects on TV for 20 seconds straight.

What I'm saying is the complete lack of any critical thinking before taking the vaccine is disturbing.

[–] Strykker@programming.dev 8 points 7 months ago

No because it came off of over a decade of research, the mRNA vaccine delivery had been in development for years, COVID is also a type of virus related to other viruses they had developed or were developing vaccines for.

This was not some weekend project dumped out with no thought.

[–] MuffinHeeler@aussie.zone 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

But the vaccines literally have zero to do with the US administration. Why would the president inform your medical decision making process? With the exception of J&J (which I know nothing of), they were developed and manufactured outside the US.

In Australia people also have issues. They are calling it vaccine fatigue here, where people aren't getting their boosters and also aren't getting their flu shots. People are getting tired of vaccines. I admit I'm behind on mine. I had my 4th shot last April, and you are meant to have a booster every 6 months. So far I've had 2x Pfizer, 1x Novavax/Nuvaxovid and 1x Moderna. I've also had covid 3 times. Every shot (except Novavax surprisingly) makes me have minimum 2 days off in bed/on the couch with symptoms and I find myself putting it off.

[–] spaphy@lemmy.ml -2 points 7 months ago

That is a ridiculous amount of work and jabs. Do you find that there is near to no sickness then? In the USA I find that COVID is seasonal for everyone here no matter how many vaccines you're getting. In other words, I'm curious do you find it makes a difference keeping up with it?

As for politics - in the USA the structure of what decisions below the president get made can sometimes change during a term because Democrats and Republicans basically play musical chairs when the opposite party is president. So it might be a democratic figurehead for a president at the top but speaker of the house is Republican and maybe the justices are Republican in decision making. Trump appointed new justices during his time that made a lasting impact with abortions during Biden's presidency for example. More relevant to this conversation and topic they both had different stances on vaccines relative to their core voters. Trump appeared skeptical at times of Dr. Fauci who was chief medical advisor to the USA.