When all is said and done, given what we know and what we don't know, getting the COVID vaccine is a crap shoot. My age coupled with the fact that I have asthma and a history of bronchial pneumonia, it seemed worth the risk. I didn't have an immediate reaction to the shots and I hope there are no long term side effects other than to keep me from getting COVID. A small bonus was that I got to dispense with mask wearing a little sooner than those who weren't vaccinated.
Again, I don't see social benefits/punishments as relevant, except insofar as their use wouldn't be necessary for wide adoption of a kickass product. I'll base my decision exclusively on information relating to safety, efficacy, and medical necessity. I didn't give the big bully kid my lunch money back in school, and I'm not starting now.
Other things I really don't like the look of include: Previous censorship of dissenting opinions from wholly reputable people. Government calls for even more censorship. The gigantic pool of people, who we keep pretending don't exist, who have stories of bad reactions to the shot. The same people being told by their doctor that the cause of their problems can't be the vaccine. This group now includes my own mother. No discussion permitted about antivirals, even by practicing MDs and researchers. No discussion permitted about possibilities of ADE. No discussion about the cause breakthrough cases. Definitely no talk about whether the spike protein itself is problematic. No explanations put forward to explain the side effects which so many seem to experience.
Around here, I've got members of parliment who ignore emails about proposed vaccine legislation. I've got a state health department who says they don't have any studies or trials to show me which form the basis for their recommendation to legislators to pass covid vaccine mandates, and I need to contact the federal health authority for that. I've got a federal health authority which doesn't reply to emails and cannot be reached by phone. Their internal technical advisory group also does not reply to emails and can't be reached by phone. And I've got a slew of organizations which either can't or won't comment on the legislation of vaccine mandates, including labor unions, the human rights commission, the labor law omnibudsman, the medical ethics department of the Australian Medical Association, legal aid, and several very expensive lawyers who don't return messages inquiring about the legality of such proposed laws. I mention this to illustrate that, when I say I can't find much in the way of discussion or information, I don't mean "I googled it, ya know, but nothing came up." No, I've contacted everyone. Ev-er-y-one. I got bupkiss.
So why all the foilhat? Well, shit. I was 51% yes on vax. They can still get me back to that if I start seeing information I believe in. But right now, not so much. Sadly, it doesn't look like happening.
I'm still glad my dad got it. Mom, idk.
