The COVID-19 vaccine in retrospect

[SeltzerMist]

When Trump said "Its the Dems' new hoax" that was the moment covid became political. So we can thank MAGA for that too.

 

[ChibiMofo]

The COVID-19 vaccine saved my life. So for those of you who hate me, there's that.

I'm just glad this hasn't turned into another low-IQ anti-vaxxer thread with comments from the kind of morons that are currently having their children die from measles, which stopped being a thing once a vaccine was created 40 years ago. I mean you really have to be a special kind of dumb to be against vaccinations.

 

[crimson826]

You know, I almost considered getting the vax after I was told it would turn me into a lizard by the anti-vaxxers .

I caught covid before they even had a vax out for it, and saw no need to get a vax for something my body could fight off. To be honest, I've had sinus infections worse than covid. Maybe people with certain medical conditions were more susceptible to it than I was.

 

[XenoFredo]

Which one(s)? Like most, i spent it watching television, but the only quotable line was Maggie De Blocks "blijf in uw kot". (stay at home)

I will assume you're not actively trying to gaslight me. I think it's normal you didn't register any of these since they were not relevant for 95% of you who folded. And please don't nitpick, a few of these come from Belgian politicians, or people with a lot of influence on the political scene. These were published in our top national media.

And it was the line of their political parties, I watched all the "boring" debates (to me they certainly weren't, hearing how my life would soon be ruined) in the Chamber. The only reason none of these measure went through was that the virus finally receded (like we knew it eventually would naturally) around March 2022.

 

[Taleweaver]

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I will assume you're not actively trying to gaslight me. I think it's normal you didn't register any of these since they were not relevant for 95% of you who folded. And please don't nitpick, a few of these come from Belgian politicians, or people with a lot of influence on the political scene. These were published in our top national media.

And it was the line of their political parties, I watched all the "boring" debates (to me they certainly weren't, hearing how my life would soon be ruined) in the Chamber. The only reason none of these measure went through was that the virus finally receded (like we knew it eventually would naturally) around March 2022.

I'm not trying to gaslight, indeed, but you said Belgian politicians "would ruin us". What you reply is with a bunch of clickbait headlines that even there are written in past tense (eg. Conner Roussau's: "only vaccinated SHOULD get access to public places."). I've seen these sorts of debates, but they didn't spark until after at least the first batch of vaccinations were widely available and distributed.
I can understand that if you were hellbent on not getting a vaccine, you'd consider these sorts of messages as personally out to get you, but frankly...that's the price for individualism. The vaccin was distributed free and accessible(1). I've heard of a few edge cases of potential allergies, but these weren't marginalized either.

You claim that covid receded naturally, but I've got to strongly disagree. On three counts.
1) As a consequence of this anti-vaccination rhetoric, vaccinations against measles are dropping (mostly in the US). Result: measles, a disease pretty much considered extinct since last century, is making a comeback
2) virusses need hosts where they can thrive to survive. If the majority of humans are vaccinated, the virus has less opportunities to survive. if it can't survive, it won't affect non-vaccinated people either. That's what this whole "herd immunity" is about: have enough people vaccinated so the non-vaccinated people can't be affected. Though a scare tactic, that's what the abovely floated measures would've resorted to if the general population would massively reject vaccinations.
3) who said covid receded? It's obviously not around in the same degree as it was five years ago, but hospitals still have covid cases. Heck...a former colleague of mine somehow caught it two or three weeks ago.


(1): once widely available, of course.
(2): not the one I was talking about earlier

 

[XenoFredo]

I can understand that if you were hellbent on not getting a vaccine, you'd consider these sorts of messages as personally out to get you, but frankly...that's the price for individualism.

So you were trying to gaslight me, and still trying now, saying these actual threats by public figures were nothing. And of course, you're telling me what all my vaccinated loved ones told me at the time, that I was bringing this upon myself, which was of course the inevitable position one would take once one had gotten their first dose. Post-hoc rationalization, no way around it.

You could say the same for me but here I am, all those years later with countless other people who didn't get vaccinated and perfectly fine. I didn't gamble so I don't have to worry about what these mRNA vaccines may have done to my body. But as I've said in a post earlier, you have absolutely nothing to worry about, right? May you keep your peace of mind then.

 

[Sir Tortoise]

The thing about COVID that got to me was the way the Obama, Hillairy and Biden used it to further their socialism agenda. The purposely tanked the economy and used the pandemic to manipulate Generation Z into thinking that capitalism has failed. "I can't get a well paying job, I can't afford health insurance, I can't afford college, I can't afford current prices on things". Yeah, and who's doing is that? The Democrats! They wanted to disrupt the entire country because they earn for power and want to pass socialism.

I have a couple of questions.
1) what the hell are you talking about, like, where did they "purposefully tank the economy" and how? What did they do to make capitalism look bad, assuming this "socialism" stuff is an actual motive and not just the bad word being thrown around.
2) ...Were the Democrats in power during Covid?

 

[DiscostewSM]

Oh fuck me! (sorry for language, but this upsets the living shit out of me).

I am a strong supporter of cancer research, including vaccines for them, and was made even stronger after my mother was diagnosed and died from breast cancer. Now these shit-for-brains want to cut into research that can lead to treatment of them. I normally don't wish death by cancer on anyone, but here, I'd make an exception.

 

[KingVamp]

Stuff like this, just continues to show how "pro-life" these people actually are.

 

[LoggerMan]

If you convinced just one person to get the vaccine then your crusading was worthwhile. My mother was lucky enough to get a ventilator during one of the peaks, but many others were not so lucky.

 

[XenoFredo]

You guys know new treatments go wrong all the time and often turn out to be worse than the cure, right? I'm all for medicine that reliably works but these vaccines (of a completely new sort, they do not work like your OG Louis Pasteur vaccines), simply weren't tested enough and we haven't had enough time to evaluate their safety. That was the issue and it still is the issue now 5 years later since new treatment normally go through tons of testing over a long period of time.

And it's a bit laughable to pick the craziest tweets out there which probably had a couple of likes if any to then justify how your side is safe and on the side of reason and science or whatever. People who haven't trusted these vaccined have a point and it was reasonable for them to refuse these injections and try their luck with their immune system. I did, tons of people around me did, of all ages, and they're all fine now.

 

[Sir Tortoise]

You guys know new treatments go wrong all the time and often turn out to be worse than the cure, right? I'm all for medicine that reliably works but these vaccines (of a completely new sort, they do not work like your OG Louis Pasteur vaccines), simply weren't tested enough and we haven't had enough time to evaluate their safety. That was the issue and it still is the issue now 5 years later since new treatment normally go through tons of testing over a long period of time.

And it's a bit laughable to pick the craziest tweets out there which probably had a couple of likes if any to then justify how your side is safe and on the side of reason and science or whatever. People who haven't trusted these vaccined have a point and it was reasonable for them to refuse these injections and try their luck with their immune system. I did, tons of people around me did, of all ages, and they're all fine now.

I think you're equating speed of testing with amount of testing.

It does take a long time for most medications to be approved. This is because of several factors, like limited funding being split between multiple projects, or how there's only so many people available for human trials.
When there's a global pandemic, those factors tend to shift a little in that all of a sudden you have lots of people all looking into the same issue, with lots of funding, and all the volunteers you could ask for. There is no 12-month wait trying to find enough suitabke people willing to try the new drug once , now you have a waiting list.

It has now additionally recieved the testing of being rolled out to millions of people, and intense scrutiny of that rollout has showed no significant issues. The method behind these vaccines does not leave much room for long-term effects, certainly none we wouldn't see hints of after 5 years, and if we had to wait 10,15,20, whatever years, no medication would ever be released. Let alone the obvious downsides of waiting that long during a pandemic.

Also, there was a traditional vaccine available. Not sure if it is still available, they may have stopped making it when it became clear there wasn't much reason for it, but in the very short term where concerns about long-term safety would be most relevant, that was there.

 

[XenoFredo]

No amount of funding can replace time, to say that we know with certainty that the mRNA technologique won't cause issues in humans in the next few years is quite... unscientific. We don't know. I'm not talking about 20 years, only the number of years that was required for all medications or vaccines to be rolled out before Covid, which was 10 years, certainly not 1 or a couple. There is really no way around this, you took a gamble and deemed it wise, we took another. Time will tell.

 

[DiscostewSM]

No amount of funding can replace time, to say that we know with certainty that the mRNA technologique won't cause issues in humans in the next few years is quite... unscientific. We don't know. I'm not talking about 20 years, only the number of years that was required for all medications or vaccines to be rolled out before Covid, which was 10 years, certainly not 1 or a couple. There is really no way around this, you took a gamble and deemed it wise, we took another. Time will tell.

Can they cause issues in some? Yes, but compare that to not doing anything, and a LOT more people simply die. Science is what has provided humanity with the ability to increase the average human life expectancy. Take that away, and we'll be back to life expectancy in the low 30s. I mean, we had practically eliminated the measles, but now, it's coming back because some shitheads think what was used to hold it off is not needed anymore.

 

[XenoFredo]

we'll be back to life expectancy in the low 30s.

Life expectancy was never in the low 30's. It's an average skewed by infant mortality, I thought this was common knowledge by now. In the Ancient World, if you made it past infancy, you'd live to be at least 60-70, so all the scientific method got us is about a 10 year increase on average, which is not bad of course, but we should really do away with this Enlightenment propaganda that medieval people lived to 30 on average and were constantly battling famine and diseases.

Modern science has done a lot of wonderful things for us materially but did a lot of damage to us psychologically. The levels of mental illness we have today was simply not a thing before the modern era. It has warped our way of thinking about life and it was especially obvious during Covid, where survival at all costs was praised, but to live what kind of life exactly? Stuck at home without seeing your loved ones for months, watching Netflix and have junk food delivered. A life not even worth living.

 

[Deleted member 705600]

Modern science has done a lot of wonderful things for us materially but did a lot of damage to us psychologically. The levels of mental illness we have today was simply not a thing before the modern era. It has warped our way of thinking about life and it was especially obvious during Covid, where survival at all costs was praised, but to live what kind of life exactly? Stuck at home without seeing your loved ones for months, watching Netflix and have junk food delivered. A life not even worth living.

The levels of mental illness we have today are a result of modern life and the constant pursuit of production, not modern science. You are blaming the resource, not how we are using it

And also wth man? It was a god damn pandemic, not only we were trying to avoid people from dying, what type of life would you live being sick for years to no end? You all talk like the big evil goverment decided to be evil one day and jail us all for shit and giggles

It was a worldwide panic that, yes, had some bad decisions in it, a lot of them maybe, but people were dying and hospitals were getting overwhelmed, and a lot of us who got infected ended up with permanent side effects from it, what in the hell did you expect anyone to do?

 

[Xzi]

The biggest shift in wealth in human history.

Yeah no shit, that was the entire point of Trump's first term in general, and we're going through it all over again in his second term. A $4 trillion dollar giveaway to the richest 0.1% that the rest of us are expected to pay for.

The vaccine itself was no big deal like every other vaccine in history, just a way to help put this virus behind us and protect the most vulnerable populations. Every single rightie nutjob who crashed out over it was just another run of the mill grifter. People shouldn't need to argue in favor of a proven scientific method, but the omnipresence of social media has accelerated our decline into Idiocracy even more than I thought it might. There's no shortage of recordings of people on their deathbed begging for the vaccine after it was already too late, but odds are high that we'll have go through the exact same cycle for the next pandemic, even if it's much deadlier than COVID.

 

[DiscostewSM]

Life expectancy was never in the low 30's. It's an average skewed by infant mortality, I thought this was common knowledge by now. In the Ancient World, if you made it past infancy, you'd live to be at least 60-70, so all the scientific method got us is about a 10 year increase on average, which is not bad of course, but we should really do away with this Enlightenment propaganda that medieval people lived to 30 on average and were constantly battling famine and diseases.

Modern science has done a lot of wonderful things for us materially but did a lot of damage to us psychologically. The levels of mental illness we have today was simply not a thing before the modern era. It has warped our way of thinking about life and it was especially obvious during Covid, where survival at all costs was praised, but to live what kind of life exactly? Stuck at home without seeing your loved ones for months, watching Netflix and have junk food delivered. A life not even worth living.

Of course it was infant mortality, but you don't understand why and how things like vaccines contribute to their survival. And I'm not just talking about treatments after birth. I'm also talking about before. Just as the genetic material of the parents constitutes the development of the fetus, so does the immune system of at least the mother. A woman having been vaccinated to fight off diseases would transfer that immunity to the fetus, at least partially. This is basic biology.

Want to know what caused harm during Covid? Doing things like listening to Trump's mentions of bleach and horse dewormer. "But he wasn't actually suggesting their use." Tell that to the people who did partake in those things and died, who tended to side with him. Modern science is not the problem. It's those that have no clue and making a spectacle about it, like RFK Jr who goes advertising at McDonalds, takes his grandkids to go swimming in sewage-infested waters, and can't even answer simple questions pertaining to health.

Post automatically merged: Aug 7, 2025

The levels of mental illness we have today are a result of modern life and the constant pursuit of production, not modern science. You are blaming the resource, not how we are using it

And also wth man? It was a god damn pandemic, not only we were trying to avoid people from dying, what type of life would you live being sick for years to no end? You all talk like the big evil goverment decided to be evil one day and jail us all for shit and giggles

It was a worldwide panic that, yes, had some bad decisions in it, a lot of them maybe, but people were dying and hospitals were getting overwhelmed, and a lot of us who got infected ended up with permanent side effects from it, what in the hell did you expect anyone to do?

What else would a cult bent on thoughts and prayers for survival expect people to do? Simply die, because if you die, then it must be "God's will".

 

[Sir Tortoise]

No amount of funding can replace time, to say that we know with certainty that the mRNA technologique won't cause issues in humans in the next few years is quite... unscientific. We don't know. I'm not talking about 20 years, only the number of years that was required for all medications or vaccines to be rolled out before Covid, which was 10 years, certainly not 1 or a couple. There is really no way around this, you took a gamble and deemed it wise, we took another. Time will tell.

I just explained how it can greatly speed things up, but sure, there is the small component of that where we can't say about 10 years because it has not been 10 years yet. Also, there is no magic 10 year requirement anyway, thats just how long things typically took for all the reasons already mentioned.

However, all the evidence we have, on how it works and the data after 5 years, strongly suggests it is fine and will be fine. It is a gamble with the odds heavily, heavily stacked in our favour - to suggest otherwise is to ignore the evidence we do have and is like saying that there are two outcomes so its basically a 50/50. You have probably gotten on a plane despite not knowing if the plane will explode midway there.

I also think this point about uncertainly is rarely applied evenly. For example, what are the 10 year effects of not being vaccinated, meaning likely exposure to Covid without any prior protection? From what we know about how Covid works and the data we have on its long term effects, it is beyond reasonable doubt that long term effects of Covid are worse than the long term effects of the vaccine.

I trust the vaccine more than I trust bats, and it would take a lot of evidence to reverse that. This evidence does not exist.

 

[BlazeHeatnix]

The hoops right-wingers jump through to justify anti-vaxxers is downright asinine. It's all based on this idea that "Big Pharma" is out to scam you, despite the fact that the vaccine is fucking free. They somehow think that the vaccine contains ways of either controlling you, tracking your movement, or killing you, that "Big Pharma" benefits from this (somehow), that it can't be detected, and that every doctor ever is in on this massive conspiracy.

If you spouted any of this shit in the 80s and 90s, you would immediately be institutionalized.