My parents have definitely been scared by the “pandemic” and are super excited that they are able to get the vaccine next month.
Predictably, the question becomes, “when are you going to get the vaccine shot?” I’ve told them about my concerns with the vaccine back in November, and they seemed to agree back then, but it appears the COVID panic has grown into paranoia for them since then. I live in another state for a job, so I have told them that “I’m young so they aren’t giving vaccines out to my demographic yet,” though that excuse isn’t going to last. Honestly, we’ve been planning for me to visit them, and now it seems as though they are at the point where they won’t want me to visit unless I am vaccinated like them.
I’m standing my ground on my refusal to take the vaccine, as the risk outweighs the benefits in my opinion, but I think that my refusal will be the turning point of my relationship with my parents. It’s absurd to think that not taking a vaccine for a disease with a 99% survival rate would be what causes my family to not want to see me in person, but their fear of COVID (they are under 70) might be strong enough to where they give me that ultimatum. I hope it doesn’t come to that point, but I’m bracing myself for it. Most likely I will be seen as paranoid and being ridiculous, but I would rather not submit to that pressure.
Make no mistake, I’m not looking for advice, I just wanted to give a little backstory to my question to the the forum. For those of you who are skeptical of the vaccine and plan on refusing to take it, are you already seeing the relationship between your family, extended or otherwise, strained because of this? If the vaccine question hasn’t come up, do you foresee your stance on the vaccine causing your family to think more negatively of you or strain the family relationship?
I’m not a professional or expert (though frankly experts and professionals these days are increasingly useless), but I would advise those skeptical of a vaccine with less than a year of development to stand your ground on this issue as a matter of your own personal health. The pandemic has shined a blacklight on the nature of those in power around the world, and to place absolute trust in these institutions would be unwise. Stay strong in your resolve!
TBH, I don't know if the vaccine or the anti-bodies are going to protect you as different strains evolve and adapt. You may actually want to take a vaccine for your job due to exposure, but at the same time, as the virus becomes more endemic it will also become less lethal (which it already has). Frankly, everyone here probably has more concentrated knowledge of the vaccines and the disease than I do at this point. It's really hard to keep up with.
Similarly, I don't remember if the whole "asymptomatic carriers" thing actually turned out to be bunk.
Asymptomatic spreaders of the disease have at various point been vastly overhyped as a vector.
Temporary, asymptomatic carriers being a thing is more or less the norm for most pathogens. The default for most infectious diseases is you're not considered to actually have a clinical case until some symptoms show up, even if a sensitive enough test can pick up some of the pathogen in your system. Because more often than not a pathogen that enters your body is taken out by your immune system before it ever has the chance to establish itself and do any real damage.
You can theoretically get a disease (as defined by symptomatic infection) from just a single viable virus molecule, but it's super unlikely it will be able to reproduce faster than even your non-specific immune responses will destroy it, it surviving would only happen due to a serious dysfunction in your immune response. But the more copies of a viable virus you are exposed to at once the more likely they are able to out-multiply your basic immune system and you end up with a period of runaway multiplication. With enough of a starting dose even a healthy immune system will fail to keep it in check before that point and the collateral damage will be enough to make you sick. But even if you're inoculated with to a dose too small to result in actually getting sick, after exposure there is a period of some time where some small number of the virus is still active in your body as your non-specific immune responses mop up the stragglers. During that time you can detect it by PCR and may even shed a small amount of viable virus into the environment, but around other healthy people it's very unlikely that small amount alone would be enough to make anyone symptomatically sick themselves.
But if you're noticeably sick then by that point you might have have 100,000s times more of viable pathogens inside you than the peak of someone with a subclinical infection, and you will be shedding roughly proportionately more viable virus into the environment, and it is vastly more likely that you could expose other people around you to large enough number to overwhelm their immune system's first line of defence and make them sick too.
Hence why people with weakened immune systems are particularly susceptible to this virus.
I mean all pathogens really, even the frequently harmless ones, but yes.