EliteKiller wrote:Most flu vaccines are 95% effective - you're confusing a vaccine with a cure ...
A virus vaccine assists the body in creating antibodies or T-cells so that when you are infected you can safely fight of the virus, this does not mean you can't catch the virus, just that when you do it will have only a limited impact ...
Take flu, we nearly all suffer from flu in most years, for 95% (flu jab or not) those symptoms tend to be mild, for the vulnerable who take the flu jab it is a potential life saver ...
The same will apply with Covid, assuming the lock-down ends then just as with flu we will all likely still be exposed, even if we all take the 95% effective Covid vaccine that still means for 5% that will not work, in the UK that's 3.3 million people ...
A Covid vaccine is a big step forward, however just as the flu jab hasn't stopped 500,000 people dying from flu every year, nor will the Covid jab fully stop Covid.
The real fear is that different Covid strains will emerge against which the vaccine is ineffective, just as with flu, we may be "coming for Covid" but the war, just like flu, could be centuries long.
Christ, so much misinformation here.
Not once have I said that the vaccine is a cure, because it isn't. It's about protecting as many people as possible from contracting COVID-19, leading to herd immunity and bringing an end to the pandemic. This coronavirus will likely never be eradicated but we can bring an end to the pandemic and stop people becoming infected and dying at the rate they have been in 2020.
It's also naive and wrong to conflate coronavirus and influenza viruses, because they are completely different. Influenza viruses mutate at a much higher rate than others, and therefore getting the flu shot one year doesn't protect you much for the next flu season a year later. This isn't the case for coronoviruses, and the spike protein that is used to infect humans is exactly what the the vaccines target. When the coronavirus mutates it still depends on this spike protein to infect our cells, otherwise it can't cause us a severe illness.
It's for this reason that the influenza vaccine is nowhere near as effective as the coronavirus vaccines likely will be. Flu vaccines are not 95% effective, so I've no idea where you got that number from. I imagine it's one you just made up to doom-monger as much as possible. A couple of sources:
WebMD:
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/2020090 ... lu-vaccineOn average, it’s been 40% effective, meaning it’s prevented illness 40% of the time. Since health officials started tracking it in 2003, effectiveness has varied from year to year, ranging from a low of 10% in 2004-05 to a high of 60% in 2010-11.
CDC:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/vaccineeffect.htm While vaccine effectiveness (VE) can vary, recent studies show that flu vaccination reduces the risk of flu illness by between 40% and 60% among the overall population during seasons when most circulating flu viruses are well-matched to the flu vaccine
Seriously, educate yourself before you spread this nonsense. There's all this handwringing and doom-mongering about how we'll never have a vaccine that works, and that the flu never stopped killing hundreds of thousands so the coronavirus won't either, all whilst ignoring the numerous other viruses we've successfully halted in their tracks over the past few decades—polio, rubella, measles, tetanus, hepatitis, mumps.
