PLEEEEEEASE GET VACCINATED!

Last Updated on: 8th August 2021, 10:13 pm

I apologize in advance if this post doesn’t make a whole heap of sense. Every time I think about writing it, if my brain were a car, it would be spinning its wheels on ice trying to take all my thoughts and turn them into something simple to understand. I want what I write down to be convincing, but I’m not an expert, so I’m trying to take what I’ve read and synthesize it into something that makes sense, and I don’t have all the answers. But I guess I never will, so I just have to go with what I have.

I’m going to try the best I can to answer every question I can think of about COVID vaccines, so maybe, just maybe, I can convince a few people who aren’t sure about them to get vaccinated. I know I’m not going to convince anybody who has decided not to listen, but I hope maybe I can reach a few who have some questions and aren’t sure. Questions are good, so let’s have what counts for answers right now.

I guess I’ll start with the easiest

Do vaccines make you magnetic?
If they do, it hasn’t happened to Steve or I.
Seriously, no. There is nothing in the vaccine that could possibly make you magnetic. You are more likely to have magnetizing particles in your iron supplements or iron-fortified breakfast cereals, which are most of them. But you might have seen videos of people sticking spoons to the area where they got vaccinated, as proof that they were magnetically drawn to the vaccine area. The reason the spoons are sticking to them is due to something called Van Der Waals forces. Basically, either the person is sweaty, or that spot is especially smooth, so the spoon will stick there. Plus, spoons are usually not made of iron so aren’t so magnetic anyway.

Do the COVID vaccines contain microchips?
Short answer is nope. This one was fun to learn about. There are teeny weeny microchips being designed to allow for wireless monitoring of things like body temperature, but a. they can’t transmit their data through the air so someone would have to scrape an ultrasound wand along your body to check on their data, and b. they’re only sorta kinda trying them in mice so far. The point is no one could track you with these microchips. They would have to get so close to you that they might as well track you with the naked eye. If they wanted to embed a chip that had the capacity to send RF transmissions, they would have to use a way bigger needle. Even then, in order to read what data it could hold, which isn’t much, they’d have to get right up to you and wave an RF reader around. No, not conspicuous at all. Again, they might as well track you with the human eye at that point.

Can the vaccines get into your DNA and change it?
Nope, not according to everything I’ve read. This one was also kind of fun to read about. I love being able to answer with more than “pffft nope. Are you nuts?” Here’s the thing, as best as I can understand it. There is a big difference between RNA and DNA. DNA has the actual programming code in it to build cells and things and it needs to have contact with the nucleus. RNA is like downloading a programming manual, and the MRNA vaccines are like programming pamphlets about the spike proteins on this Coronavirus. RNA doesn’t talk to the nucleus, but passes on the message to the cell, who makes some spike proteins, which our immune system sees as an intruder and murders them. It never met the whole virus, just the spiky things on the outside. So if it meets the virus later on, it goes “Ah! Spiky things! I’ve seen you before! Chaaarge!”

But the whole changing your DNA thing came from somewhere, but that somewhere was the wrong place. Some actual viruses, like HIV and HPV, do their reproducing thing by invading the cell’s DNA and sticking themselves on any old place they can find a spot. If that causes cancer, the virus doesn’t care. It got what it wanted and made some viral friends and now it couldn’t give two craps about its host. But this is what a virus does, not the vaccine. Vaccines are designed to only function long enough to teach the immune system a lesson about what to do in the future, and then they get to find out how good a student the immune system was by being devoured by it.

The funny part is there’s a chance that the full-fledged coronavirus has the ability to slap itself onto your DNA and integrate itself into your cells, although there is disagreement. But its vaccine can’t do that since it doesn’t get into the nucleus. If you’re worried about growing a tail, all the more reason to get the shot.

why did they choose MRNA anyway?
For a few reasons. First, MRNA vaccines can be created rapidly, which is what we needed because people were dropping like flies. Second, using MRNA means we don’t have to inject people with actual virus, either weakened or dead. We just have to give our cells the recipe for the spike proteins. Third, hopefully this will help make mutated versions of the virus still recognizable to the immune system, where if we used the whole virus, then it might not recognize mutations.

How could they whip these out so fast?
This is the most reasonable question there is. The answer is a whole mix of reasons. First, this post explains a bunch of them. It’s the whole idea that tons of people came together because we all needed this vaccine and pooled resources like they should do a lot more often.
Second, some of these companies, like Moderna, had already done a bunch of research on vaccines because of the original SARS virus, so they just had to tweak it to fit this virus.
Finally, in the case of the MRNA vaccines, there has been MRNA work for years for treating stuff like cancer, so it’s not like they dreamed it up out of nowhere for this vaccine. We just didn’t hear about it. I think they were under pressure to get something out there, but for the most part, I think they pulled it off pretty well.

What’s the point of getting vaccinated if you can still catch it and spread it?
Believe me, it’s frustrating to think I’ve done all of this and maybe I could still catch COVID or give it to someone else. But the research seems to be indicating that if a vaccinated person does catch COVID, most of them are not sick at all and find out they have it when they are required to get a test for some reason, or they feel kinda crappy for a couple of days and that’s that. If an unvaccinated person catches it, they may get that lucky, or they may end up dealing with after-effects for months, end up in the hospital, end up in the ICU or die. The data coming in seems to indicate that of the people being hospitalized, 96 percent weren’t fully vaccinated. The latest stats indicate that Yes, very few vaccinated people have ended up in the hospital or died from COVID, 7525 out of 164 million in the U.S, or 0.004 percent, but usually there’s a reason for that. Their immune systems are fighting other battles so didn’t learn the lesson the vaccine came to teach them, or they’re just worn down because the person is extremely old. The sucky part is they took a chance on the vaccine and still kind of lost, but if they hadn’t gotten the vaccine and they caught COVID, it would have been even worse. Some of the ones that only ended up in the hospital after vaccination may have died without it, and the ones who died anyway certainly would have died if they weren’t vaccinated. But for most people, the outcome is definitely better if you get the vaccine.

It’s kind of like wearing a seat belt while riding in a car. It’s not going to save you from everything, but your chances of reducing harm in an accident are much higher than if you were thrown out of the car at high speed. Just read this graphic description of what happens to the non-seat belted. Being unvaccinated is like being non-seat belted. If you run into COVID, you will have the greatest chance of the worst possible outcome. If you get vaccinated, or wear your seat belt, you may still get hurt, but less so.

On the spreading side, research is constantly changing because this is an evolving thing, but it seems like if you’re vaccinated, you spew less virus if you do happen to catch it, the chance of which is way lower. So you can still spread it, but for less time and to less people, and the more vaccinated people there are, the less harm this stupid virus can cause. If you spread it to another vaccinated person, chances are they get a sniffle and feel like garbage for a day. Whoopdy doo. That’s what we want, to turn COVID into Whoopdy doo as much as possible.

Finally, if you’re vaccinated, you kill it off faster, which means it’s less likely to mutate, which means it’s less likely to make a variant that says “I spit in the face of your immune response!” If you’re not vaccinated, it can have more time to use your immune system as a training ground to make a bigger badder better version of itself.

I don’t want to be part of an experiment.
Then I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. You are already part of one. Anyone who chooses not to be vaccinated is part of the control group, i.e. the ones getting no protection and letting nature take its course. A lot more of them are winding up in ICU’s and hospital beds than those in the experimental group, i.e. the vaccinated. What was the number I mentioned above? 96 percent locally were not fully vaccinated?

So and So died right after they got the shot.
And what was also happening with So and So? I knew someone who claimed they passed out due to the vaccine. We came to find out that the passing out happened two days after vaccination when she went out and lounged on a beach in the hot, hot sun. Correlation is not causation. There have been adverse events that happened to people, definitely there have been. But we are all very complex human beings and it’s hard to know exactly what happened. Maybe someone was super anxious about getting the vaccine, got it, and then had a heart attack because of the stress. Did they die after getting the vaccine? Yes, but it was caused by something else. Many many people have gotten vaccinated, and there has not been a massive influx of people winding up in the ER. Of course, check with your doctor to see if you should get it, but if you have anything resembling a functioning immune system, you should be fine.

I’m going to be infertile if I get vaccinated!
Nope. If you’re a woman, the immune system’s antibodies won’t go after the proteins used to make placenta. They’re not as similar to the antibodies as they might look. And if you’re a guy, your little sperm are just as swimmy as they were before. But you know what can mess up your hormone balance? Being thwacked to the earth by a COVID infection. That’ll do it for sure.

what about the blood clots?
This one is a bit of a risk-benefit analysis. There’s a chance that you could get a blood clot from at least one of the vaccines, about 1 in 100000. But if you contract COVID, which gets easier and easier to do, especially if we decide to just let things go back to normal, your risk of blood clot, among many other things, is much much higher. If you contract COVID, even if you don’t go to the hospital, your chances are 1 in 100 that you’ll have a blood clot.

Why do you care? You got vaccinated.
That’s not how vaccines work. Getting one isn’t like having an impenetrable shield that COVID hits with a clang and falls to earth. It depends on as many of the community as possible getting vaccinated so that the virus can’t spread and mutate. The more of us that are vaccinated, the stronger that shield gets, but one vaccinated person is only as protected as his neighbours. There are a few people who can’t get the vaccine, and for their sake, the rest of us need to get it so those people are less likely to encounter the virus.

Picture one guy with a garden hose trying to fight a wildfire. The poor fellow doesn’t have a prayer. But if we all get out our hoses and cover more area, we might be able to slow down the fire, and if fire pops up again, we’ll still have enough hoses to control it.

Or picture the different armies commanded by different countries. Some countries have all the fancy weaponry. They have nukes and missiles and big ol’ guns and drones that can be controlled with a weird video game interface. Some countries aren’t so lucky. They have some ships and some planes, but their bombs and missiles can’t reach as far. Other countries are less lucky still, and have some used navy ships sold to them by other countries. Maybe they have a dude with a big rifle sitting up top trying to pick off what he can.

All of the armies go to a training exercise teaching them how to detect a new enemy and defeat it. But even with these lessons, some of them will sustain more damage before they fight it off than others because a rifle bullet will do less damage than a targeted smart bomb.

I am one of the countries with the less efficient ships and planes. Your grandma might have the used navy ships. For the sake of us, the more allies we have with nukes around, the more chance the threat can be eliminated before the less equipped armies’ defenses have to mobilize. But if your armies don’t go to training school, they won’t recognize the virus, which is like allowing spies to get in, learn about our defenses, and find ways to circumvent them. Please be our allies.

We should just aim for herd immunity.
Yup, and the way to do that is with vaccination. I don’t want to live in a world where we do it naturally. Have we not learned anything from the last 18 ish months? Exposing people to a full blast of COVID doesn’t end well for many of us, even though it works out to a small percentage of everyone who has been exposed. But a small percentage is still a huuuuge number of people. *breaks out calculator*
our world’s population is 7.9 billion.
The number we need to infect to reach herd immunity, if the figure of 70 percent of the population is to be believed, is 5.5 billion. But it may be higher because I’ve heard 80 percent and 90 percent thrown around. But let’s aim low and see what happens.
of those infected, usually 20 percent have cases that are serious enough to wind up in the hospital. That’s 1.1 billion around the world. That’s a huuuuge number of people who technically recover but are dealing with lingering symptoms, a huuuuge number of people who have new conditions, a huuuuge number of people who could die. About a tenth of those, so 2 percent of overall infections, die. That’s 110.6 million.
Yup. That’s “A lot of fucking dead people.”

And while we’re reaching this herd immunity by fire, our health care systems are stretched so thin that people with non-COVID problems can’t be treated because there is literally nowhere to put them.

We haven’t even come close to herd immunity. Currently, we have had 203 million cases around the world, and 4.3 million deaths, and look at the problems we’ve seen. Why on Earth would we choose the natural herd immunity route when we have a much more painless way to get there?

The 1918 flu went away on its own. Won’t this one do the same?
Yes, given enough time and enough carnage. That flu managed to infect up to a third of the world’s population depending on the source of stats before it went away. But our population is at least four times as big as it was then and many times more mobile. Nobody was flying around the world in 1918. It still spread because of soldiers on ships, but I think it would spread even faster now. I think the only way back to something resembling normal is to get as many people vaccinated as humanly possible.

I just want to wait a little longer.
Serious question, but what are you waiting for? 4.4 billion doses of vaccine have been administered around the world. The only thing I’m seeing is a stark difference between the number of vaccinated versus unvaccinated people landing in hospitals and a much smaller death count. And the longer you wait, the more inconvenient it will be to get your shots. Right now, there are all sorts of mass vaccination options open to you. But as the demand drops, they will start to close down. If you don’t believe me, take it from this doctor here. You can still get them, but the options won’t be so plentiful. Right now, you don’t even have to book your appointment. More often than not, You can just walk in and say you want your covid shot and they’ll give it to you. But soon, you’ll have to go to your doctor to get them.

So this is the part where I get down on my knees and beg anyone who hasn’t been vaccinated. Please get your shots unless you absolutely positively can’t. You will be helping to move us out of this mess. It is the one thing we can all do to bring back our lives, and I really want mine back.

And if all of that wasn’t enough, read this message from that same doctor. She summed up very quickly a bunch of what I spent 13 hours or so writing.