Vaccinated

I read a lot about the old west.

Smallpox gets mentioned a lot.

You know what doesn't get mentioned about smallpox in all these old newpaper clippings, books and papers?

People catching smallpox once they've been vaccinated or survived it.

That stands in contrast to vaccinations for COVID, don't it?

Polio is still in living memory.

My mother in law has a gimpy ankle from it.  Not too severe, but it's from polio.

Once an effective polio vaccine was found the number of infections went from over 35,000 a year (crippling 15,000) to under 100 in less than a decade and fewer than 10 ten years later to being completely eradicated in 1979.

Are COVID vaccinations describing this same arc?

Are people who are immunized for polio contracting the disease and being affected as if they weren't.

If you're going to berate me for being opposed to getting a COVID shot, and supporting getting other vaccines, you're going to have to show me that getting the jab is worth getting.

Unlike a lot of panicky people I have actually had the disease!

You've got to show me that getting the jab will enhance the immunity I already have.  You've got to show that a positive outcome with the jab is more likely than a negative one without it.  You've got to show that a negative reaction to the jab is less serious than contracting the disease.

If not, why bother getting it?

Even if the jab is perfect, I refuse to obey a mandate where the company making the vaccine is absolved of all legal responsibility for the side effects of the vaccine should I be unfortunate enough to suffer a severe reaction.  I refuse to obey a mandate for a treatment that's not yet passed normal long term testing on human subjects.  We're only a year into the long term human testing.

The absolution of responsibility also means that if serious side effects manifest at, say, five years I cannot sue for damages.  What measures which normally apply to a new therapy have been ignored in the "get it out the door" rush without worry that fucking it up will have real consequences for the companies making the vaccines?

What's worse is it doesn't appear to actually be a vaccine.  It's a therapy that reduces the effect of the course of the disease.  It doesn't seem to keep you from catching, spreading or recontracting COVID later.  I know there are claims, but the places with the lowest incidences of the disease are places with the lowest rates of vaccination now.  You're going to have to account for that before you get on your perch and lecture me about not getting vaccinated for COVID.

Mine is not irrational position, so stop pretending that it is.