Sticksboi05

Well gender is lifestyle whereas sex is what you're referring to but so you know, intersex people do exist who have sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.

In general I agree with this but in this case, if we simply allow people to choose, we're inevitably setting the "pandemic over" clock back more and more. There's only one way to end this for society and the NFL, stop replication of the virus so we end the risk of variants with immune escape. If we let the virus simply run rampant among the unvaccinated, there will be worse variants than Delta and that is not good. Delta is extremely contagious, what if the next one is extremely contagious and 3x more severe - then the NFL and the rest of us are looking at square one.

There is nothing weirder than the "I'm a contrarian so that means I'm intelligent" line of thinking. If you think the Earth is flat, you're not smart for going against the herd you're an absolute moron. Everyone believing the Earth is not the center of the galaxy as a herd means common sense prevailed, not that we're sheep. 98-99% of COVID hospitalizations and deaths in this country are now unvaccinated people. The UK just had its Delta variant wave. Last time they had 50,000+ cases a day they were seeing 800 to over 1,000 people per day with the worst outcome, but now that number has not exceeded 150 and many days was well under 100 thanks to the vaccines. You can look at rates of severe illness in people over 65, you can look at the infection rate comparisons between unvaccinated and vaccinated people, there's an absurd amount of evidence the vaccines work, and that doesn't even include the Phase III clinical trials that were done a year ago. Your body literally produces mRNA every second of every day through DNA transcription to tell your cells to make proteins - mRNA is certainly more natural than the weird supplements that lots of "naturalists" take every day. I do agree though, the way to persuade people is not through anger or yelling, but simply providing accurate data to combat rampant misinformation. But you can find dozens of real world, peer-reviewed studies on the effectiveness of the vaccines. Right now they are reducing severe disease 20-fold and transmission 7-fold. Re: WFT I think there's a lot of issues at play here including historical racism and misinformation. I don't want to personally attack any of them but for example. Montez Sweat's comments suggest there is also a fundamental lack of understanding of what the vaccine is supposed to do. He thinks it's an STD pill when it's actually a condom. I think expected FDA approval in the fall could also persuade players to get vaccinated, a lot of people are waiting on that.

Everyone *in areas of high transmission*

Yes LA County

One dose of Pfizer/Moderna is very poor in stopping Delta symptomatic disease but very good in stopping hospitalizations. Two doses gives you excellent protection from everything. The best data we have is from Public Health England and Scotland. Israel's data is more observational and has a lot of confounders that make it unreliable. Below is a good graphic showing the impact of the vaccine even in the face of Delta.

It takes a lot to change your mind about something so personal to so many so props to you - this is great. I'm glad you've decided to protect yourself and the community - it's as American as it gets. But I don't blame your hesitance, a lot of influencers are simply using this to raise their platform by purposefully sharing misinformation about the vaccines and shame on them for convincing so many people about microchips, viral shedding etc. I think public health has also failed us here. They cannot update their file from the 20th century in terms of messaging the importance of vaccination to people. When you're bombarded with "get it, it's safe and effective" over and over and over, it sounds like a snake oil salesman trying to sell you something. They are relying on an old paradigm that the general public is not that smart and we have to dumb it down so your dog can understand. Except I can now follow top virologists on Twitter and get the same data they get, and much faster than they message it out. How about a White House briefing explaining what efficacy means because people still don't get what those numbers mean. How about a presser or a TV commercial on the authorization process of the vaccines because tons of people still don't get that they had to go through three clinical trials and then review by the FDA plus an outside advisory committee before the go ahead was given. How about explaining why the FDA required companies to track trial participants for 60 days at least, because historical data shows 90% of adverse reactions to vaccines occur within the first 40-45 days? There is major distrust right now of the government and Big Pharma has always drawn skepticism deservedly - now is NOT the time to simplify the message, now is the time to fight misinformation with the most precise data we can give people. When people hear "safe" they think that means there is zero risk of anything if they take the vaccine, what safe actually means is the risks are very low and the benefits outweigh the risks, which is the case for all medicines ever created. That has been explained incredibly poorly.

JNJs vaccine in studies so far has shown to produce neutralizing antibodies above the level of concern for Delta variant.

I am glad this person is not in the hospital and I agree on keeping people aware that you can still get COVID after vaccination but I honestly think sharing these anecdotes is not helpful. It scares vaccinated people into thinking the vaccine has been beaten by variants when it hasn't by any means, and it makes people who haven't been vaccinated ask then what's the point?

One study doesn't dictate that boosters are needed. Wouldn't freak out over this headline.

More explanation of the misinterpretation of decent percentages of infected or hospitalized being vaccinated.

This is to be expected - as more people get vaccinated, especially in high risk groups, more of the cases etc. will shift towards vaccinated people. In the UK, 95% of people over 60 or 65 (can't remember) have been vaccinated).

Hope you're feeling better. New study just came out this week showing JnJ produces neutralizing antibodies against Delta and has roughly the same efficacy against severe disease as it did vs. Beta, 80 percent or so. So while JnJ folks are more likely to be infected, still great odds for it to be mild at worst.

Delta is for sure the biggest threat, it is already the dominant U.S. strain and will be close to 100% of our cases at some point just. It is also the only strain so contagious that it is becoming the globally dominant strain, which has not occurred yet to this point. To this point it has been regional, but Delta will be the sole strain eventually. Good thing is the best data we have (from Scotland and UK) shows full vaccination is still around 80% against infection, better against symptomatic disease and terrific against anything worse. But the pockets of America where vaccinations are low, sadly are going to explode in cases. It should be stated though, no variant exists that evades vaccine protection yet in the sense of "my vaccine is useless". Certain variants, especially Delta, have a higher chance of infection but - maybe a 10% drop from wildtype SARS COV 2 based on the best data we have but the average person who isn't like 90 or immune compromised should not be thinking, my vaccine has been rendered ineffective.

UK has been dealing with Delta rise for a week - cases skyrocketing but hospitalizations nowhere near as much, hopefully a sign of the vaccine at work. Most cases are in the unvaccinated. Israel likewise has seen higher cases with much smaller hospitalization rise. The bumps are also way lower than the pre-vaccination waves and the B.1.1.7 Alpha wave. Gamma (P.1) has less immune escape than Delta, which the mRNA vaccines still perform very well against - study estimates of 79-88% infection protection and even better in hospitalization against Delta. Gamma is also going to be outcompeted by Delta globally because it's not remotely close to as contagious. Too early on the AY.1 variant (Delta plus) to say whether or not it's immune escape is enough to be scared fore the mRNA-vaccinated. It seems U.S. states aren't going back over Delta but I could see businesses say only vaccinated welcome. Lots of place in NYC are doing this.

I do feel bad that so many people are being prayed upon by grifters who want to use vaccine skepticism as their next way to grab followers and boost their self-ego. If social media didn't exist the vaccination rate would be much higher.

For anyone who comes across the inevitable OMG I saw that people in XX place got Delta after vaccination headlines... read the thread

853,000 COVID hospitalizations reported last month in U.S., 99.9% in people not fully vaccinated. Not sure how much more data is needed to show how good these vaccines are.

UK data shows the odds of infection by Delta is just 1 in 22,000 after full two dose vaccination compared to 1 in 2,000 for unvaccinated. The vaccine works incredibly well and is holding up well vs. variants. Get vaxd, live life!

Tell all the people who first got chickenpox, recovered, and then thought there was nothing more the virus could do to them. Oh wait, it actually just hides in your nervous system and chills. Why don't you have the same energy for the virus as the vaccines in terms of what could happen long-term?

You know what else it will take years to determine the long-term effects for ... COVID-19. And considering we already know that it can cause neurological, heart, lung and other issues after you recover, I'd prefer not to find out.

The Delta variant looks to be about as immune evasive as South African variant (B.1.351) but still cannot escape the protection of full mRNA vaccination. However once it arrives in the U.S., folks who aren't vaccinated are going to be at much higher risk than with current variants. Tell folks to get vaccinated ASAP.

Some people will it a second time because of running into a variant / getting a massive infectious dose. Rare though. The vaccines, especially mRNA, will absolutely SIGNIFICANTLY reduce your odds of infection but nothing is 100%. This messaging needs to be updated - people are still relaying the precautionary messaging of health experts when the vaccines first released months ago - they had to say that because we didn't have real world data yet to fully validate even though basically every vaccine reduces transmission. We have real world data now - CDC study found 90% reduction in transmission after full mRNA vaccination. Below are some other infection rates post vaccination in big real world observations ... Consistently under 1 percent. I know some folks are still worried about being around unvaccinated people - the data is clear. If you tell me I have under a 1 percent chance of betting infected, I'm living normal life. And most of those infections are asymptomatic.

A few things: 1. It is totally fine to be skeptical about large pharmaceutical companies – there is a track record of shadiness, shameful price gouging, BS lobbying efforts etc. 2. This is the worst pandemic in 100 years, and as we're seeing across the globe, if you allow the virus to spread it will continue becoming more fit and more transmissible and in some cases more severe - while there is a limit to how much it can mutate, the reality is we didn't have 4-5 years to wait on a medical approach, and the nature of the virus eliminated the ability for public health alone to address it like SARS, which did not spread asymptomatically and had an incubation of just 1-2 days - much easier to handle even though it was a far more severe virus. 3. Each company involved here has massive incentive to not mess this up – you're going to be administering this to hundreds of millions, maybe billions across the globe when all is said and done - you mess that up, your business is catastrophically damaged in the eyes of regulators, governments and consumers. This vaccine campaign could not afford to be half-assed. The FDA upped the usual standards for EUAs and corners were not cut - Phase I, II and III trials were done and two months of safety data was tracked - 90% of vaccine side effects occur within 40-45 days, so they built in another 15 and they're still tracking signals. 4. Let's put this in perspective - you interact with big companies every day with awful track records - your phone, the food you eat, the car you drive etc. All these companies have probably done things that would make you go WTF. And most Americans eat things every day with a much more proven risk of long-term side effects - junk, processed foods, trans fats, added sugars galore etc. If I'm willing to order Wendy's on the regular, and crave fountain soda, I'm willing to put a tiny piece of mRNA into my body. 5. The vaccines weren't "rushed" we simply have better technology than we did in the past, and we were already working on vaccines for other coronaviruses, allowing us to speed up the process. This logic is like saying why would I trust a current car when it took us way longer to put together a Ford Model T. Yeah, I hope so, it's 2021.