#I'm on Moderna and Astra Zeneca | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

innko · 2 years

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sorry, i wasn’t saying that *you* specifically said that it was important for countries to receive vaccines. i should’ve worded it better. what i meant to say was: the reality of the world is that it was very important for struggling countries to receive the covid vaccine. from your standpoint on vaccines, what was the explanation for this? (or, alternatively: do you think that it wasn’t actually important for struggling populations to receive the vaccine to begin with?) we’ve seen countries and populations of people devastated by the coronavirus because they didn’t have access to vaccines (brazil, india, indigenous people in the United States). do you think that these populations would have been worse off if they HAD received the vaccine on time? also, to your last point, there are different variations of the covid vaccine that work differently in the human body. do you really think every single one of those variations is more harmful than contracting the actual coronavirus itself?

i guess an overarching question would be: do you think the world would be better off if covid vaccines hadn’t been invented?

thanks for clarifying that and the apology :)

although you didn't specify exactly what you meant by it, i'm going to proceed defining "struggling countries"/places that got hit harder as places with a higher death rate, rather than case rate, since covid has been absolutely everywhere for a long time now so i think it's not productive to focus on case rates at this point

i don't think that we can say with certainty that those places you mentioned struggled a lot because they didn't have access to vaccines. i actually don't think we can say with certainty there is single reason a particular place did better or worse than another. there are many factors that can influence how well a person fares if they were to get covid, and distrubution of these factors varies across populations (obesity, chronic health conditions, diet, lifestyle, parts of the immune system determined by genetics, access to treatment, probably some factors we don't even know about). we can compare places that had similar (lack of) access to vaccines and see they had very different death rates. for example, many african countries have had low covid death rates while having low vaccination rates. they lacked access to vaccines just like the places you mentioned, but did better. out of the oecd countries, which i'd say have had pretty similar access to vaccines (altough some countries got them before others), japan has a much lower death rate, than say, the uk. while i can list factors that influence covid outcomes, i can't say for certain why any place did worse than another and i don't think anyone can.

now, since we know benefits of the vaccine (not just preventing infection but also lessening the severity of disease) wear off within a matter of months, i don't think getting it to people in regions with a higher death rate would have made a huge difference overall and especially over time. however, accounting for the fact that it did work better against the original variant and that some deaths came from not being able to get treatment because too many people were sick with covid at once, i think there was a chance it could have slowed down the rate of people getting sick and allowed more people to be treated properly in the beginning stages.

i don't really think the populations you mention would have been worse off if they'd gotten the vaccine earlier. in terms of severe negative effects from it, those would probably be the same and occur at the same rate regardless of when it was rolled out.

in terms of variations of the vaccine, i think the mrna (pfizer, moderna) and adenovirus vector (astra zeneca, j&j) ones caused more harm than good. i know sinovac is made with a more traditional method, but i honestly don't know enough about it to say either way - there isn't that much published in english or japanese (the languages i speak) about it. in theory, novavax seems safer because at least the amount of spike protien injected into someone is controlled. i reserve judgement on that one too though, as there isn't as much info on it available - it isn't very accessible worldwide, less people have gotten it, hasn't been distributed outside of trials very long.

your last question is a very big one. if it had just been the vaccines, no mandates, no coercion, and no demonizing people who had refused to get it, i don't necessarily think the world overall would be a better place had they never been invented. i think there were some modest health benefits from it, largely in the beginning although knowing how quickly the benefits wear off now, i don't think the risks are worth it. in addition there have been other pharmaceutical products distributed to many people that were recalled for thier danger, and while i acknolwedge how people suffered due to them i can't say each one of these kinds of products made the whole world a worse place overall. however, i strongly believe the way these vaccines have been forced on people, the invention of vaccine passports, demonizing people for their medical choices, and social forces pitting people against each other based on thier choices has had profoundly horrible effects on this world and we would have been better off had it never happened.

#ask

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