Curious about flu shots

[JTHunter]

I've always gotten the flu shot.

I also got the Covid vac, but not the booster.

As far as I know, I have not had the Kung Flu.

"Freaky" Fauci has been vaxxed AND 2 boosters and he STILL has come down with covid.  Tells you how good those shots are, doesn't it? 

[K Frame]

"Freaky" Fauci has been vaxxed AND 2 boosters and he STILL has come down with covid.  Tells you how good those shots are, doesn't it? 

No one has EVER said that the shots offer 100% immunity. Flu shots don't offer 100% immunity for *expletive deleted*ck's sake.

What IS true, however, is that in virtually every case of a vaccinated individual contracting the illness is that it is significantly less severe than it would have been had the individual not been vaccinated.

I have NO clue why people started to believe that "well, they said 1 jab and I'd be immune for life, but I got a mild case of the disease, and you know what that means? IT MEANS THAT VACCINATIONS ARE GOVERNMENT MIND CONTROL BULLSHIT! IT'S ALL A PLOT/SCAM!"

Jesus wept.

[cordex]

No one has EVER said that the shots offer 100% immunity. Flu shots don't offer 100% immunity for *expletive deleted*ck's sake.

The universal public health messaging surrounding the COVID 19 inoculations for a significant time after they were launched was that they were ~95% effective at preventing either the infection or retransmission of the virus. The line about "and if you do get it, it'll be more mild" was a mere afterthought.  That was why many people got it - to protect others, and to prevent initial infection.

People largely believed what they were told by the medical authorities, and when it turned out that that the inoculation actually isn't anywhere near that effective at preventing either infection or retransmission, the authorities had to abandon the Bailey of near-perfect protection against infection and retreated to defending the Motte of a reduction in the chance of serious negative outcome and dismissing breakthrough infections/transmission as unimportant.

In short, the expectation that the COVID inoculations would be like just about every vaccine people in the US are familiar with and largely prevent infection was entirely the fault of the same Sciency people who now claim that no one really expected them to prevent infection and you are stupid if you ever believed that.  Maybe this time they're finally telling the truth.

[Ben]

Yeah, as I recall, for about the first six months, all you heard from the administrations, and then after Biden was elected, the MSM and many, many "medical professionals", was that the vaccine was a miracle that would prevent covid, full stop. Anyone who questioned that, rightly making comparisons to the flu vaccine, was labeled a denier, moron, and right wing nut job.

It wasn't until many of those same people started getting covid after vaccination that the message was changed to emulate what is said about the flu vaccine, and "nobody [cough] Rachel Maddow[/cough] ever said covid vaccines would prevent covid."

[K Frame]

As I said, no one (or at least no competent medical professional) ever said that the vaccinations would be 100% effective.

Those same people also were quite clear in saying that there was absolutely NO guarantee of what would happen to the vaccine's effectiveness once the virus began to mutate, AND they were quite clear in warning that the virus WOULD mutate and would very likely mutate rather quickly (which it did) because that is what viri do.

The only people I saw claiming that the shots would be 100% effective were idiots in the media who were hyping the "gotta do it to protect everyone and stop the virus in its tracks" line of though (which did come from health professionals and the government) and anti-vaxxers who used the 100% claim as a point of failure to weaponize their anti-vax status.

The amount of hyperbole from proponents of both sides had the very serious, and very negative, effect of drowning out the actual truth as it was stated BY the sciency people in the first place.

[K Frame]

"Yeah, as I recall, for about the first six months, all you heard from the administrations, and then after Biden was elected, the MSM and many, many "medical professionals", was that the vaccine was a miracle that would prevent covid, full stop."


I'd really like you, or anyone else, to provide an authenticated statement to that fact as it came from ANY medical professional who was either involved in the development of the vaccines or in their administration that that would happen.

The amount of both inadvertent and flat out fraudulent representation of the facts about the vaccines and what people like Fauchi had to say was absolutely rampant on both sides of the issue.


This is a pretty good example of the kind of misinformation that was being slung around to support varying positions on the subject: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-fauci-vaccineeffectiveness-idUSL1N2L82Q4

[Ben]

I'd really like you, or anyone else, to provide an authenticated statement to that fact as it came from ANY medical professional who was either involved in the development of the vaccines or in their administration that that would happen.

You'll note I put "medical professional" in quotes. For examples, just google interviews from the first half of 2021 with any of the "medical professionals" used by MSM news outlets. You'll find tons of video showing the CNN. MSNBC, etc "medical professionals" stating that the vaccine stops covid, and "medical professionals" from Fox News, etc. saying that the vaccine doesn't stop covid and also has dangerous side effects.

I recall seeing very few interviews with actual virologists and microbiologists. Most interviews were with general practioner doctors, nurses, etc. And when people like Robert Malone went against the MSM message, they were called nutjobs.

[K Frame]

There you go... now you're beginning to grasp what I'm actually saying.

The amount of misinformation and misdirection that was spread by BOTH sides was almost criminal in nature.

[cordex]

As I said, no one (or at least no competent medical professional) ever said that the vaccinations would be 100% effective.

Dude, you're the one bringing 100% into the discussion.  The original claim from both Pfizer and Moderna (and backed by public health authorities as well as enforced by social media) was ~95% effective.  If they had been 95% effective at preventing infection and retransmission and also provided good protection for the remaining 5% of breakthrough cases then I'd say the critics of the inoculation would have less to complain about.

Those same people also were quite clear in saying that there was absolutely NO guarantee of what would happen to the vaccine's effectiveness once the virus began to mutate, AND they were quite clear in warning that the virus WOULD mutate and would very likely mutate rather quickly (which it did) because that is what viri do.

No, that was not a clear line of messaging in the early periods.  In fact, I don't remember any significant messaging about that until well after variants starting popping up.  I'd note that if you know your inoculation does not provide near sterilizing immunity then it is going to produce selection pressure in favor of inoculation-resistant strains.

So if, as you claim, there was a general understanding from the public health community that the virus was likely to mutate quickly, and that the inoculation is not going to provide sufficient immunity to wipe out the virus, then the mass-inoculation effort must have been engineered to fail.  Under those conditions, and knowing as we did that the disease disproportionately impacts people based on weight, age, and general health, the correct action would have been to deny vaccination to young and healthy and to provide it exclusively to the elderly, the obese, and the immunocompromised.  Injecting young and healthy people - who are unlikely to have a serious expression of the disease anyway - is simply going to speed run the virus' development of inoculation resistance.

The only people I saw claiming that the shots would be 100% effective were idiots in the media who were hyping the "gotta do it to protect everyone and stop the virus in its tracks" line of though (which did come from health professionals and the government) and anti-vaxxers who used the 100% claim as a point of failure to weaponize their anti-vax status.

Again, the claim was 95%.  Made by media, government, doctors, researchers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and really the only line that could be spoken in polite company.  Claims against the 95% effectiveness were considered "vaccine disinformation".  "Breakthrough cases" were supposed to be rare.

We were sold the line that if only enough people got the inoculation the virus could be eliminated entirely.  That is only possible if it provides significant protection against both infection and retransmission - not just protection against the worst of the consequences when you inevitably do get infected.

For some reason I thought were old enough to remember this...

[dogmush]

I'd really like you, or anyone else, to provide an authenticated statement to that fact as it came from ANY medical professional who was either involved in the development of the vaccines or in their administration that that would happen.

I think that no one figured it would be a "stop COVID in it's tracks" thing, but people are remembering things like this:

In a March 9, 2021 CDC webinar titled "What Every Clinician Should Know about COVID-19 Vaccine Safety and Effectiveness and How to Address Patient Questions and Concerns" the CDC presenters included the following about Vaccine efficacy:

This [the Pfizer] vaccine was studied in persons 16 and older, and the trials were conducted in United States, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Turkey, and Germany. The primary outcome of symptomatic lab confirmed-COVID was observed in eight people in the vaccinated arm, 162 persons in the placebo arm, giving a vaccine efficacy of about 95%. Hospitalization was much more rare. There were no hospitalized cases in the vaccinated group.

....

For the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine phase three trials, the interim results came from a similar time period as to Pfizer -- September to November of 2020. This trial was conducted in persons 18 years of age and older and only in the United States. For the primary outcome of symptomatic confirmed, lab-confirmed COVID, there were only 11 cases in the vaccinated group versus 185 cases in the placebo group, yielding a vaccine efficacy of 94%. 

Bolding mine.

It is a reasonable inference to say that if you don't have symptoms, and don't have a confirmed lab test, you probably don't have COVID.  That is what people were expecting at the begining, that you had a mid 90% chance of not getting COVID bad enough that you got symptoms or needed to take a test.  That is not what the vaccines ended up delivering, and the messaging shift to "protects against severe COVID, that's what's important" was pretty abrupt in the summer of 21.  I still think that for the vast majority of people, the vaccine was and continues to be a good idea, but it's untrue to pretend the US public health apparatus didn't move the goalposts when they saw the vaccines falling short of intial estimates.

[zahc]

What IS true, however, is that in virtually every case of a vaccinated individual contracting the illness is that it is significantly less severe than it would have been had the individual not been vaccinated

Is there any real proof of this? It seems to be something repeated frequently, and I've never seen a shred of actual evidence.

[dogmush]

Is there any real proof of this? It seems to be something repeated frequently, and I've never seen a shred of actual evidence.

evidence that any particular individual got a less severe case than they would have?  No, how would there be?  Evidence that the incidence of severe illness, hospitalization, and death from (not with) COVID is substantially lower in vaccinated populations?  Sure there are a ton of studies and data showing that.

Here's one, but there are probably hundreds out there.  You can also check out the pretty charts on CDC's data tracker: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status note that if you click the radio button to cases, vaxxed and unvaxxed follow very similar spikes, just vaxxed is lower.  But if you click it over to deaths, the vaxxed line suddenly loses the spikes of the unvaxed deaths and both case lines.