I DO agree with his basic premise, however. I have not been vaxed, and will not. Do I care about people around me---hell yes. I mask up wherever I go, but I go wherever I please.
I have mixed feelings here, as you can imagine from the above. You seem to have been lucky, but please be really careful and remember others might not have the same experience as you if they come into contact with the virus. You can see from my post above that I know examples of people who have really suffered (all younger than you, and some less than half your age!). Plus we can get a good picture by looking at the wider statistics. It's still somewhat of a lottery and we're still learning about why some people shrug it off and some young, very fit, and healthy people get struck down.
I am 75, a 2 times cancer survivor that has low immunity to everything, and am healthy as can be.
You've certainly had a very difficult time and I'm very sorry to hear that. Having lost a partner to cancer when she was relatively young and having lost older family members to cancer too, I've seen how tough it is on the individual, both mentally and physically, and on those around them. I am, however, very glad you seem to be fine these days and I hope that continues, despite your reduced immune system. Please take care of yourself.
I did test, as did my wife, and we are both positive for the Chinese virus's antibodies; therefore, sometime in the last almost 2 years, we have both gotten it. Neither of us have ever felt bad, nor are we aware we ever had it.
That's interesting. You may have had a weaker strain of the virus some time ago and been one of the lucky "asymptomatic" carriers, which may be protecting you to some degree now. The strains around now, such as the Delta strain, seem to overwhelm immune systems more effectively and contribute to much higher viral loads. The Delta variant (which emerged in India) also seems able to infect people who have previous had the virus or have been vaccinated, although those people may find their immune systems are much better primed. The Alpha variant (which emerged in the UK) was about 1.5x more transmissible than the original, and then the Delta variant is about 1.5x more transmissible than the dreaded Alpha variant! So it's not a surprise we're seeing the greater spread as the virus evolves, and it probably explains the awful scenes we saw in India, with families buying oxygen because hospitals ran out, cremations not being able to keep pace, and so on. As I touched upon above, some people can be asymptomatic, some people have mild symptoms, while others may be hospitalised or even worse. We don't fully understand the reasons why at this point, although I'm sure there will be various environmental and genetic factors (e.g. "how bad a dose" you got when exposed, your underlying health, etc.).
On a side note, let's please steer away from this "Chinese virus" stuff, which is the realm of dubious political statements. It is not anything a credible scientist would say, and it is a subtle way of planting the seed to villainize another race or nation... Which can be quite sinister, as we know from history. Remember a lot of strains have developed elsewhere around the world now: the Alpha variant appeared within the UK and hit the US, Beta first observed in South Africa, Gamma first observed in Brazil, Delta first observed in India and now sweeping the world, Mu first observed in Colombia, and many more that simply don't make the news, to be honest. Also, there's evidence now that the Spanish Flu after World War I was actually from the US, so sometimes the national naming of the time turns out to be misleading anyway... Along these lines, perhaps we should call all Americans "Africans" because, regardless of millions of years of other heritage along the way, we'll choose to focus upon a current understanding that mankind's earliest origins were around the Great Rift Valley region of Africa.
The vac's are a feel good stick in the arm, and a cash cow for the vax makers.
Hmmm. If by "a feel good stick in the arm" you're alleging that vaccines are placebos that have no real effect, I'm sorry but I don't know where you are getting this from at all. For the benefit of anyone else reading this thread, I need to be clear that the many scientific studies around the world would say this is simply flat out wrong.
Remember, annual flu vaccines offer something like 40-60% effectiveness, off the top of my head, but people are happy to take those and yet question the coronavirus vaccines, which offer significantly higher effectiveness. We're very fortunate with effectiveness of the current vaccines, and yet there can be a lot of inconsistency with regards to attitudes and uptake, it's weird. But, it is true that no vaccine is perfect. Ideally, they prevent infection too, but that is optimistic and the main job is really to prevent people getting very sick if they do get infected.
If you're saying pharmaceutical companies will make money out of this, I agree with you: they will, as they do from any treatment, I'm afraid. Remember your previous cancer treatments will have been some of the very most expensive treatments around, and companies will have made a lot of money out of this (and it makes me uneasy that any company should profit from someone's misfortune). But that does not mean that you having those treatments was not
absolutely the right thing for you to do, despite any profit someone might make along the way.
It is worth pointing out here, though, that AstraZeneca has agreed to sell the vaccines at effectively cost price, instead of making huge profits. That is why the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are about 10x the cost of the AstraZeneca vaccine. It's also part of why we should be on guard against "vaccine nationalism" and spats between "interested parties" when they are advocating one vaccine over another. And, no, I don't work for AstraZeneca or for Oxford.
