So what should we do in the meantime?

Let everyone get it, hospitals over run, loads of deaths from Covid and guess what deaths from other serious illnesses that don't get the right attention and care because of Covid.

As knowledge and medicine develops, the risk and impact of such mutations should decrease. Chris Witty explained it the other day that he has a 5 year view on what will happen and each 6 months gets better than the last because of advances in medicine.

Guessing you haven't read that.

Without getting in to debates about the ins and outs of all Covid aspects and just sticking to vaccines, this is my view-

Unless your medically unable to have them, just bloody have them. Don’t use the Tories being tories for reasons not to. Help yourself, your loved ones and the general community by having them. Thank your lucky stars you have access to them and aren’t stuck in a country where people have struggled to get access to even one jab. Things aren’t great but my god, they’d be a damn site worse had millions of people not done their (extremely small) bit and had the vaccines on offer.

There’s an element of people across society who see a vaccine as one part of them being told ‘what to do’ and they don’t like it. It could be a vaccine, a curfew, a rule to wear a mask or just parking space lines on Asda, they’ll not want to stick to any of it because that is their personality and in some cases I think they get a thrill from going ‘against the grain’.

I can take all sides of arguments on lockdowns and general rules being put in place but not on vaccines. Unless you’re able to refuse on medical grounds there’s no excuse.

My sister in law has just gone down with it and she wasn't told anything

I think it can take a few days to determine if you've got Regular Covid or one of the variants. I may be wrong though.

had a text saying mine was coming soon. Just a case of dripping some blood into a container and sending it off ... simples!! Feeling better today no shivers at least. But still no taste or smell!!! How you feeling pemps lad?

I’m fine. Just a little bit of a cold. My missus has had no symptoms at all, but she has had her booster. Mine was meant to be this week.

Unfortunately NK, there isn't always a way to find if you're medically unsuitable until after you've taken it. As someone who has been hospitalised twice, almost dying on one occasion, to "safe" drugs I think such as yourself preaching that everyone should do as they say is part of the problem. The individual should always be the final arbiter on what is right for them.

For the record, the drug that almost killed me was an antibiotic. Possibly the "safest" category of drugs we have.

Let’s not go to extremes here, I clearly get people like yourself would be nervous and would fully understand you and people in similar situations being dubious and refusing it.

Your situation will make up a extreme minority of those refusing it. There are 25% of footballers across the EFL who have no intention to get it. That must equate to hundreds of players and If any of them have concerns like yourself, fair enough but I doubt many, if any do have those concerns and that medical history. It’s a simple case of them looking after number one.

I have no history of bad reactions to drugs but everything is a risk and when you’re history is clear, as mine is, you should be getting it. What will be will be regards having it, much like when I cross the road or get on a plane. Only this decision doesn’t just benefit me, It benefits everyone around me and protects people and they do the same for me.

I’m sick to the back teeth of seeing stories about Stu Fielden or Ben Cockayne peddling their theories on Twitter. These guys aren’t (to my knowledge) dubious about having it because of their medical histories, they’re just a pair of brain dead morons, who feel fit as fleas and don’t feel the need to focus on anyone other than themselves. They’re dangerous in the extreme and do people like yourself, who have valid reasons for not wanting a vaccine, no favours whatsoever.

I appreciate that you see my personal perspective. However you're missing a few pertinent points. Firstly the "everyone should vaccinate" carries the very real risk of depriving me of my personal liberties. There'll be no concession because of my legitimate concerns. There are people on this very thread advocating for that very thing

Also, the protection to other people is overstated. I understand why, but it's creating a false narrative. As many on here are showing, the vaccines don't stop you catching it or transmitting it. In fact the reduction in transmission is exactly equal to having had the virus. If you've had the virus there is no additional benefit from the vaccine.

Finally, I've just read a report that shows that 5 professional footballers have died in the last decade due to aneurysms. In the last 12 months, since the introduction of vaccines there's been 22. So again I suggest you shouldn't be deciding what's right for any other individual based on your own (potentially misguided) opinions.

As I said in the last post. Leave the final say to each individual to decide what's best for them. Each individual is responsible for their own protection.

So never take any medicine then on the off chance you’re an unlucky one who has a reaction?

In fact why risk eating food?

So you have a history of two bad reactions to signed off drugs, of which one nearly killed you but you don’t think that would be taken in to account? I can’t buy that at all. I’m not pushing for mandatory vaccines anyway but I just feel people should see it as a moral obligation, unless they have the sort of history that you have.

We never would and never should get to a situation where people who have gone through the traumas you clearly have, would be forced in to doing something that would cause them huge anxiety and potentially cause them harm but as I said in my previous post, let’s not dramatise this because the issue isn’t the extreme minority like yourself. It’s the anti vax, anti ‘I’m being told what to do’ clowns who drive this narrative and not people with cast iron concerns like you.

On your second point I also take the ‘vaccines aren’t preventing the spread’ with a pinch of salt. Do away with vaccines and let’s see where we’d have ended up! The absolute whoppers at the start of all this who just said ‘let it rip’ and it’ll be over and done with must feel pretty foolish now (probably not in truth, as they were the likes of Fielden and Cockayne).

As for the 22 footballers dropping dead post vaccine and all these rumours of heart problems and so on, it’s been pointed out earlier in this thread that you can find stats, pull out lines from articles etc that will support your beliefs.

I’m a Wigan Athletic fan and was shocked and saddened to hear of Charlie Wyke suffering a cardiac arrest in training recently. The rumours swirled round for days that it was vaccine related but alas, he hasn’t been vaccinated. Now I could sit here and back my argument by saying ‘I heard he had Covid and It was Covid that caused his heart problems’ and push the line that ‘if only he’d been vaccinated’ but I don’t know that either. It may just be the lad had a cardiac arrest because he had undiagnosed heart problems, just like the millions of people who had cardiac arrests pre Covid.

If I do go back to it for a minute, how do we know the vaccine is causing the increased heart problems, brain aneurysm’s you speak of? Could it not be Covid itself? It’s certainly proven that is causing a whole range of complications for people.

Either way I’m certain that the small number of deaths that have been caused by vaccines or people like to attribute to the vaccine, pale in to insignificance when compared to where we’d be without it.

In short-just get your bloody vaccine/boosters (unless you have a good reason not to, much like your good self).

Preaching over.

I would live to see that report regarding the footballers
Any chance you could post a link to it?

FWIW I do agree with your last paragraph
However I don't agree that those who are not having it should be able to spread mis information for their own nefarious reasons.

Correct
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I can imagine the people of the UK closing their curtains for the first 18months of the bombing in WW2 and then saying I can't be d with this, those bombs haven't hit my house yet, there's more people dying of falls because it's dark than there is from bombs, it's up to me if I want to leave my light on, the government are not letting me have my freedom's the people in WW1 died for etc etc.

As you say, without the vaccines How bad could this have been 3rd wave onwards etc without the vaccines?
If we hadn't social distanced in waves 1,2 and 3 how bad would it have been?

As for the 2 rugby players you've named you can add HH to that

I haven’t really got involved in any Covid debates on here or on social media platforms prior to this because I see little point. People believe what they want to believe and I won’t change their mind. I certainly won’t get in to debates on measures outside of vaccines because I get there are pros and cons to them but on the vaccines, I just can’t believe my eyes (and ears) sometimes.

I had Covid pre vaccine (exactly a year ago to be precise) and whilst I felt pretty sh*te for a week to ten days, I got over it and haven’t felt any lasting effects. I’d rather have got it post vaccine but you can’t pick and choose. I know of a few fit and healthy under 60’s who died because of Covid but I don’t know a single person who has died due to the vaccine. Is that just coincidence? I suspect not but maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe I just think too logically sometimes-

Covid-bad

Vaccines-good

Chance of dying from Covid-minimal in some cases, pretty reasonable in others.

Chance of dying from a vaccine-next to zero.

*that is based on fit and healthy individuals with no history of complications from prescribed medicines*

I really want to highlight that there is a huge difference between a situation like Phuzzy points out and your typical Ben COCKayne view.

They should not be confused.

Mate, with all due respect, the fact that "you don't buy it" is exactly the point I was making. You have no experience or qualification to "buy it" or not yet it doesn't stop you pontificating on it. It is true. I know from personal experience.

If you want to see the extent of people's total bellendedness and intolerance to any independence of thought on this subject check out the utterly moronic post above. Just because I nearly died to a "safe" drug is no reason not to risk it again. I should just go ahead because that particular moron thinks I should. And to the moron in question: No, I never take unnecessary medicines. Ever. Funnily enough you acquire that particular approach to drugs when you avoided your then 5 year old son discovering your dead body on the bathroom floor by nothing more than a quirk of fate. As for food, I think you'll find I would die if I didn't have it whereas I won't die by not taking the vaccine. What an absolute tool you are