I am one of the nay-sayers regarding flu vaccines. I will definitely get a flu shot if and WHEN the powers that be will GUARANTEE that I will not get the flu, whatever strain it doesn't matter. Flu shot=no flu then I am on it like white on rice.
The same goes for a covid poke.
Keep in mind that the annual flu shot protects against only some of the strains of flu that are out there in the wild. The "experts" make an educated guess about which strains will be most active in a given year, and those are the strains that the vaccine targets. As we're seeing in the CoVid-19 trials, none of the current vaccines are 100% effective. So no matter what, a 100% efficacy will NEVER be reached. So by your reasoning, Bill, you will never get a flu shot. If you did get a flu shot, chances are very good you won't get the flu strains it was designed to protect you against, but you'll still be susceptible to the other strains that are out there circulating. And you also might be in the minority 5 or 10%, or sometimes even higher, for which the vaccine just doesn't work. But here's the thing. Right now, only the very few people that are in the trials are being vaccinated against CoVid-19. And it is a particularly virulent strain of flu, so chances are very good you'll come down with it if you are exposed. The real kicker is that significant numbers of people don't show any symptoms of the disease when they have it, and combined with the high virulence, it spreads like mad. The only way we're gonna get out of this mess is if a high percentage of the population get vaccinated, so that a high percentage of the person-to-person contacts that spread the disease don't result in new infections. If too many people take your approach, Bill, CoVid-19 will be with us for a long time to come, and the deaths will continue.
As far as the rapid development of the new CoVid-19 vaccines is concerned, from what I understand it works the same way, and is made in the same way, as all the other flu vaccines out there. They grow cultures of the disease in a controlled environment, kill it, the mix it into the injection. Your body still develops antibodies to the dead virus, so when a live virus shows up, your body knows how to kill it. The time savings resulted from eliminating delays in the approval process, slashing red tape if you wanna call it that.
Statistics show that younger people have a much higher incidence of infection, but a much lower chance of getting killed by CoVid-9. Unfortunately for people in our age group, if we get it, we are much more likely to die from it than any other age group. In the days ahead, each of us will decide if we want to be a part of the solution, or remain a part of the problem. My hope is that enough will get vaccinated to break the propagation chain, flattening the curve again so that hospitals aren't over whelmed with sick and dying patients. :2cents:
