27 minutes ago, Dan O said:

I never said anyone that I lost had a covid shot

Nor did I.

27 minutes ago, Dan O said:

This is part of the fallacy of most of the arguments about covid and the vaccines. Taking things out of the context and making implications of something that wasn't said as the basis to prove an unproven position.

Incorrect as far as I am concerned.

3 hours ago, rattlesnake said:

I didn't say I knew what would have happened if I had caught Covid, I said I knew I was right not to take the vaccine: I believe I made the right call and no subsequent events have contradicted me so far. You are implying that taking the vaccine would have automatically produced a more favourable outcome for me. I beg to differ, I would have exposed myself to unnecessary risks. I have seen enough vaccinated people catch Covid and enough unvaccinated people not catch it to know that this isn't a "vaccinated = OK / unvaccinated not OK " dichotomy, despite what was relentlessly repeated.

A lot of replies because each point deserves its own space.

Your "fact" is a belief. You made a call that worked out. Those aren't the same thing. Survivorship bias is real: the people who gambled and lost aren't posting about it - "I never wore a seatbelt and I'm still here" !!!

I'm not saying the vaccine guaranteed a better outcome for you specifically. I'm saying it was a no-lose proposition given what we knew then and what the data shows now. The risk profile of the vaccine was vastly smaller than the risk profile of unprotected exposure to an unknown pathogen. That calculation held at the time and still holds.

Also, you weren't anti-vax going in - you'd had vaccines before right ? presumably because you understand herd immunity - i.e. Measles vaccines.

On your binary dichotomy: agreed, and I've been arguing against this throughout.

Vaccinated ≠ protected

Vaccinated ≠ guaranteed anything

But:

Vaccine = statistically less likely to catch it

Vaccine = statistically less likely to suffer severe illness or die if you do

Vaccine = faster immune response, shorter infectious window, less transmission to others

That last point is where your argument has a real gap. You wanted freedom, to go out to restaurants, watch PSG, dine with friends. You wanted to be, were, or should have been out living normally, right ?

An asymptomatic carrier doesn't know they're one. Vaccination wasn't just self-protection. It was harm reduction for everyone around you, including people whose immune systems couldn't fight it the way yours apparently could.

3 hours ago, rattlesnake said:

No, I am not presenting it as evidence against vaccination, I am offering an empirical example to illustrate my point, c.f. "vaxxed vs. unvaxxed" dichotomy mentioned above.

No. You're offering anecdote. The plural of which is not evidence, and not empirical example either.

Had your father been unvaccinated and fine, and your very healthy brother vaccinated yet hit hard by Covid, that might have lent your argument some support. Still anecdotal though, and only meaningful as part of a broad data analysis.

3 hours ago, rattlesnake said:

11 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

"Flu on steroids" for a healthy thirty year old is actually precisely what the vaccination argument predicts. The concern was never primarily fit young men. It was always the elderly, the vulnerable, the immunocompromised.

Exactly, so why was he threatened, pressured and singled out as a threat to society? This is the core issue.

Because an unvaccinated but otherwise healthy person can still carry and transmit the virus to someone far more vulnerable. That's the whole point.

And this keeps getting framed as binary. It isn't. We're talking about a full medical spectrum: age, comorbidities, immune status, exposure levels. "I'm young and healthy so why should I?" is exactly why we vaccinate against measles too. Not to protect ourselves. To avoid passing something manageable for us to someone for whom it isn't.

3 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Because an unvaccinated but otherwise healthy person can still carry and transmit the virus to someone far more vulnerable.

As can a vaccinated one.

4 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Not to protect ourselves. To avoid passing something manageable for us to someone for whom it isn't.

The 'do your bit for the team' principle only holds water if there is no risk of adverse reaction, which isn't the case with the Covid vaccine, though I know you will refute this. If there is a risk for me then I should be able to refuse… just as I refuse to have my short-sightedness corrected by surgery because there is a minuscule risk of blindness and I am not willing to take that risk.

3 hours ago, rattlesnake said:

My opinion is that the vaccine weakened him (and there have been scientific publications on the nefarious effects repeated vaccinations can have on the immune system when received in a short time frame), as he was fit as a fiddle and stronger than ever until he took it. In his own words, the 3rd shot "killed him" and he felt terrible for months after taking it. He now refuses to take another shot as he has realised that it is not as innocuous and fail-proof as it was made to be.

Again - I do commiserate the loss of your father - however to continue the debate, we must move along without emotion.

--

Which vaccination weakened him (your farther)? Polio? Tetanus? TB? Or are we talking specifically about the Covid vaccine?

...And which Covid vaccine? mRNA? Astrazeneca? Pfizer ? - all dangerous in the same way ? (another discussion, I know)

These aren't pedantic questions. They matter enormously to any scientific claim being made here.

There's actually one legitimate point buried in all this: in the short window after vaccination, the immune system is actively responding. If you contract(ed) a hard viral load of SARS-CoV-2during that window (first wave), it's a double hit at the worst possible moment. That's real, short-term, and worth acknowledging.

But "Your father feeling terrible after the third shot" isn't a scientific argument. It's grief dressed as one, and I say that with genuine sympathy. He had the first vaccines and survived the first wave after contracting Covid. That outcome is at least as attributable to vaccination as his later deterioration is. You can't selectively assign causation.

There's also no robust scientific consensus that repeated Covid vaccination causes lasting immune damage.

Publications exist across the full spectrum on this. Citing "scientific publications" without specifics isn't an argument, it's a gesture toward one.

My own parents take annual Covid and flu vaccines. My mother's is going bonkers and my father's permanently grumpy. Anecdotal, obviously. But I'm meeting your anecdote on equal terms: neither of us is making a scientific argument at this point....

22 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Your "fact" is a belief. You made a call that worked out. Those aren't the same thing. Survivorship bias is real: the people who gambled and lost aren't posting about it - "I never wore a seatbelt and I'm still here" !!!

It wasn't a gamble, it was an accurate assessment of the situation. Again, you are resorting to false equivalence to make your point. Driving without a seatbelt, or riding a bike without a helmet, both of which I never do, guarantees a 100% catastrophic outcome in case of impact, even at moderate speed.

25 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

I'm saying it was a no-lose proposition given what we knew then and what the data shows now.

This is false as far as I am concerned, I know several people who had serious issues after injection. Yes, anecdotal, yes, correlation does not prove causation, yes, you don't know anyone who had an adverse reaction… such is the difficulty of this conversation.

27 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Also, you weren't anti-vax going in - you'd had vaccines before right ? presumably because you understand herd immunity - i.e. Measles vaccines.

I didn't really 'understand heard immunity'. Just like (almost) everyone else, I subscribed to a dogma which I had been subjected to since birth and never thought to challenge it, essentially through societal conditioning. It was a stance driven by ignorance, as I have repeatedly said. The more I educated myself on the matter, the more my wariness grew.

31 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

That last point is where your argument has a real gap. You wanted freedom, to go out to restaurants, watch PSG, dine with friends. You wanted to be, were, or should have been out living normally, right ?

Not at all, I really couldn't have cared less about these things. But I saw the way the rhetoric was evolving, I understood the radicality of what was going on, I was very clearly targeted as an enemy of the State and a danger (this is not hyperbole, it is the truth and I can easily demonstrate it) and I gave that threat the importance it deserved.

As an example, below is a screenshot from mainstream news channel LCI which I took in 2021. The theme of the debate (title visible at the bottom) was "Should the unvaccinated be brought to justice?". That's a little more concerning than not being able to go to the restaurant, isn't it? This was the prevailing sentiment at the time, and the reason I documented it is precisely because I knew it would be memory-holed.

11 minutes ago, rattlesnake said:

19 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Because an unvaccinated but otherwise healthy person can still carry and transmit the virus to someone far more vulnerable.

As can a vaccinated one.

A vaccinated person can carry it too. Nobody argued otherwise.

But take 100,000 vaccinated and 100,000 unvaccinated. How many in each group are carriers? For how long?

How infectious during that window?

That's the whole argument, and it's not binary.

Vaccination reduces probability, duration of infectiousness, transmissibility, viral load, aerosol persistence. Not to zero. Just significantly (and hopefully enough)...

... And in a chain of transmission across a population, that reduction compounds at every link.

An unvaccinated person is more likely to carry it longer, shed more, and pass it further. That matters when you trace it out: the vaccinated vulnerable person passes it to the unvaccinated healthcare worker, who takes it home, who passes it on a bus, who gives it to someone's grandparent, who sits next to the immunocompromised child in a waiting room. One of them is in kidney failure.

Nobody is claiming vaccination stops transmission. The point is it narrows the window, reduces the load, and gives more people further down that chain a fighting chance.

11 minutes ago, rattlesnake said:

19 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Not to protect ourselves. To avoid passing something manageable for us to someone for whom it isn't.

The 'do your bit for the team' principle only holds water if there is no risk of adverse reaction, which isn't the case with the Covid vaccine, though I know you will refute this. If there is a risk for me then I should be able to refuse… just as I refuse to have my short-sightedness corrected by surgery because there is a minuscule risk of blindness and I am not willing to take that risk.

I still feel like I need to crack through the self-centredness and land the Spock - Kurk moment. "The needs of the many..." (com'on - you know that one surely)

On the surgery analogy: decent, but it has a limit. And are you sure you meant short-sighted? Because surgical correction for people who's long-sight is poor is fairly straightforward these days. If you meant correcting for poor-short-sighted co, keep the specs. Either way the analogy breaks down for a simpler reason: laser eye surgery affects only you (unless refusing the specs and driving - or cooking for the misses and mix up baking soda and powder)....

Refusing vaccination during an active, highly transmissible pandemic affects the chain I described earlier. Those aren't equivalent choices.

On adverse reactions: real, documented, worth taking seriously. But nobody serious ever claimed vaccines carry zero risk. Neither does sushi. The argument was always about relative risk: probability and severity of adverse reaction weighed against the probability and severity of catching and transmitting Covid unvaccinated.

At a population level that calculation was never particularly close, even where individual cases genuinely complicated it.

So the surgery comparison doesn't hold in the pandemic context either. You're not just declining something done to you. You're declining something that reduces your chance of becoming a link in a transmission chain that ends with someone who had no say in the matter.

The right to refuse is real. But "I assessed my personal risk and opted out" and "my decision had no consequences beyond myself" are two very different claims. The first is defensible. The second isn't.

20 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Again - I do commiserate the loss of your father - however to continue the debate, we must move along without emotion.

--

Which vaccination weakened him (your farther)? Polio? Tetanus? TB? Or are we talking specifically about the Covid vaccine?

...And which Covid vaccine? mRNA? Astrazeneca? Pfizer ? - all dangerous in the same way ? (another discussion, I know)

These aren't pedantic questions. They matter enormously to any scientific claim being made here.

There's actually one legitimate point buried in all this: in the short window after vaccination, the immune system is actively responding. If you contract(ed) a hard viral load of SARS-CoV-2during that window (first wave), it's a double hit at the worst possible moment. That's real, short-term, and worth acknowledging.

But "Your father feeling terrible after the third shot" isn't a scientific argument. It's grief dressed as one, and I say that with genuine sympathy. He had the first vaccines and survived the first wave after contracting Covid. That outcome is at least as attributable to vaccination as his later deterioration is. You can't selectively assign causation.

There's also no robust scientific consensus that repeated Covid vaccination causes lasting immune damage.

Publications exist across the full spectrum on this. Citing "scientific publications" without specifics isn't an argument, it's a gesture toward one.

My own parents take annual Covid and flu vaccines. My mother's is going bonkers and my father's permanently grumpy. Anecdotal, obviously. But I'm meeting your anecdote on equal terms: neither of us is making a scientific argument at this point....

I wasn't trying to add emotion to the debate, just giving objective facts. Yes, of course it is anecdotal, and at face value it doesn't scientifically prove anything, but it is not completely irrelevant that my dad went from pro-vax to anti-vax within that time frame, given all the other elements to be taken into account regarding the deployment of the Covid jab and its aftermath (and yes, I am only talking about the Covid jab here, he had 2 x AZ which were fine and then a Pfizer one, that's the one that "killed him").

Edited May 13May 13 by rattlesnake

7 minutes ago, rattlesnake said:

56 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Your "fact" is a belief. You made a call that worked out. Those aren't the same thing. Survivorship bias is real: the people who gambled and lost aren't posting about it - "I never wore a seatbelt and I'm still here" !!!

It wasn't a gamble, it was an accurate assessment of the situation. Again, you are resorting to false equivalence to make your point. Driving without a seatbelt, or riding a bike without a helmet, both of which I never do, guarantees a 100% catastrophic outcome in case of impact, even at moderate speed.

You have no idea of the accuracy of your assessment - you never took the vaccine nor caught covid - thats the flaw in your argument - its emotional and as such bias.

.... and to take the seatbelt argument a step further to reality - people have been killed by seatbelts - weirdly there is an overlap in the debate here. Motorcycles and Helmets the same - although the risk is greater their due to the additional weight of helmet (discussion of that for another - though an easy concept from which to reflect upon).

6 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

And are you sure you meant short-sighted?

Good catch, my mistake: I am farsighted and have an astigmatism

8 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Refusing vaccination during an active, highly transmissible pandemic affects the chain I described earlier. Those aren't equivalent choices.

They are when seen through the lens of the Nuremberg Code (c.f. the specifics mentioned in my earlier post this evening).

Can my stance be disagreed with and even challenged on moral, ethical, philosphical grounds? Certainly, I appreciate that. But can it be challenged on legal grounds? No, yet that was the threshold which was crossed during Covid… and that is the crux of the issue.

18 minutes ago, rattlesnake said:

Can my stance be disagreed with and even challenged on moral, ethical, philosphical grounds? Certainly, I appreciate that. But can it be challenged on legal grounds? No, yet that was the threshold which was crossed during Covid… and that is the crux of the issue.

Might need to quote Dickens again... Quote: Mr Bumble: "the law is a ass.....

... Yet the law evolves as we learn - is that crossing a line ? abuse of power certainly comes into it - however, what abuse can we manage - not everyone one will be happy - this was / is ethical, moral, and legal triage - there is no perfect answer.

Morality is stronger, and you were claiming that when quoting "my body, my (legal) choice" ... (or was that an LGBGT thread or euthanasia article I was reading this morning - its late can't quite recall).

5 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Might need to quote Dickens again... Quote: Mr Bumble: "the law is a ass.....

... Yet the law evolves as we learn - is that crossing a line ? abuse of power certainly comes into it - however, what abuse can we manage - not everyone one will be happy - this was / is ethical, moral, and legal triage - there is no perfect answer.

Morality is stronger, and you were claiming that when quoting "my body, my (legal) choice" ... (or was that an LGBGT thread or euthanasia article I was reading this morning - its late can't quite recall).

The sweet spot is an alignement of morals, ethics and law… easier said than done, granted.

Love Dickens and particularly Great Expectations, but as a retort I will go for a more down to earth reference with Lon L. Fuller:

"Law and morality are inseparable. They must go hand in hand... Without morality, law becomes mere calculation; without law, morality becomes sentiment. Together, they produce a civilization."

9 minutes ago, rattlesnake said:

The sweet spot is an alignement of morals, ethics and law… easier said than done, granted.

Love Dickens and particularly Great Expectations, but as a retort I will go for a more down to earth reference with Lon L. Fuller:

"Law and morality are inseparable. They must go hand in hand... Without morality, law becomes mere calculation; without law, morality becomes sentiment. Together, they produce a civilization."

Is that a genuine quote : - it would be somewhat ironic to quote a moral code while making up a quote.

"The liberty to refuse is not absolute; it extinguishes itself at the precise point where the breath of one becomes the peril of another. That which we call civilisation is nothing more than the covenant by which the individual yields, in measured part, what threatens the whole"

Quoted by: Sir Chad Mirth....🤨

12 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Is that a genuine quote : - it would be somewhat ironic to quote a moral code while making up a quote.

"The liberty to refuse is not absolute; it extinguishes itself at the precise point where the breath of one becomes the peril of another. That which we call civilisation is nothing more than the covenant by which the individual yields, in measured part, what threatens the whole"

Quoted by: Sir Chad Mirth....🤨

I couldn't bow out without referencing my favourite playwright, Gideon Pinflout. From his masterpiece The Phantom Plague of Cathay:

"Must we now pierce the flesh with silver dart,

To keep the phantom germ from striking heart?

A strange salvation, where the bodkin’s sting

Must buy the freedom that the heavens bring."

6 hours ago, rattlesnake said:

The 'do your bit for the team' principle only holds water if there is no risk of adverse reaction,

I guess you must have black and white TV and monitors because you don't seem capable of seeing a spectrum of possibilities in any subject where your bias is extreme. Hardly anything in life has zero possibility of negative effects.

Trust me.... I'm an expert on risk analysis... LOL.

Please start your instrument of reason before posting.

Edited May 14May 14 by gamb00ler

5 hours ago, gamb00ler said:

12 hours ago, rattlesnake said:

The 'do your bit for the team' principle only holds water if there is no risk of adverse reaction,

I guess you must have black and white TV and monitors because you don't seem capable of seeing a spectrum of possibilities in any subject where your bias is extreme. Hardly anything in life has zero possibility of negative effects.

Fair point, I misspoke. I should have said:

The 'do your bit for the team' principle only holds water if the risk of adverse reaction is within the limits established as standard across the vaccine industry.

18 hours ago, rattlesnake said:

I am willing to work on my Dan O comprehension skills, but I need a methodology to do so.

try reading what is written and not speculating some other meaning or intent

10 minutes ago, Dan O said:

try reading what is written and not speculating some other meaning or intent

I did read what was written and asked you an open question without hidden thought.

On 5/14/2026 at 3:29 AM, richard_smith237 said:

Because an unvaccinated but otherwise healthy person can still carry and transmit the virus to someone far more vulnerable. That's the whole point.

Gemini AI queries returned:

Children, adolescents, and young adults were the demographics most likely to be asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19, with studies suggesting that nearly 50% of infected children and over 30% of young adults never developed symptoms. This trend was largely attributed to more robust immune systems and lower levels of ACE2 receptors in younger populations.

Early in the pandemic (pre-Delta), mRNA vaccines (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna) were highly effective—often 90% or higher—at preventing all SARS-CoV-2 infections, including asymptomatic carriers. Real-world studies showed that fully vaccinated individuals were roughly 90% less likely to test positive without symptoms compared to unvaccinated individuals.

Reducing the number of asymptomatic carriers was an important method of 'flattening the curve' and preventing increased mortality due to non-COVID disease.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12145281/

On 5/8/2026 at 2:30 PM, Stiddle Mump said:

You are a dodger for sure, and when you are challenged you deflect. Answer the question Sir. Your statement below.

",,,,,,,,,,asymptomatic carriers of COVID were very common."

Where did you get the info that there are people spreading COVID?

If only you knew how or were sufficiently unbiased....to ask the right questions.....

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9935239/

On 5/14/2026 at 5:38 AM, rattlesnake said:

I couldn't bow out without referencing my favourite playwright, Gideon Pinflout. From his masterpiece The Phantom Plague of Cathay:

"Must we now pierce the flesh with silver dart,

To keep the phantom germ from striking heart?

A strange salvation, where the bodkin’s sting

Must buy the freedom that the heavens bring."

Ah, but the rebuttal penned by the great Elkranes Tatt....

Though fearful tongues may curse the healer’s art,

And tremble at the needle’s fleeting smart,

Far worse the pestilence that stalks unseen,

To steal the breath where lively lungs had been.

What folly spurns the shield by wisdom wrought,

When countless graves attest the battles fought?

The prick is brief, the safeguard long shall wake,

A lesser wound for all our children’s sake.

22 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Ah, but the rebuttal penned by the great Elkranes Tatt....

Though fearful tongues may curse the healer’s art,

And tremble at the needle’s fleeting smart,

Far worse the pestilence that stalks unseen,

To steal the breath where lively lungs had been.

What folly spurns the shield by wisdom wrought,

When countless graves attest the battles fought?

The prick is brief, the safeguard long shall wake,

A lesser wound for all our children’s sake.

From the classic Much Ado About Coughing, if my memory serves me correctly.

On 5/13/2026 at 8:41 PM, Stiddle Mump said:

Stiddle here, trying to educate you medical industry sheep.

You like to talk about sheep a lot. Are you a shepherd?

I seem to remember that 'the boy who cried wolf' was a shepherd... is that just a coincidence?

Beware... there are rabid wolves about!

Edited May 16May 16 by gamb00ler

On 5/11/2026 at 7:24 PM, Stiddle Mump said:

My research Includes the US Naval research of the 1920s and 30s. No evidence there that a 'disease' can be passed from one person to another.

Not all surprisingly, you have greatly exaggerated the results of the Navy's research into Encephalitis lethargica(EL).

Later research (2010) has identified an enterovirus as the likely pathogen causing EL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalitis_lethargica

You really need to divorce yourself from the old 19th and 20th century 'knowledge' and embrace the new.

Edited May 16May 16 by gamb00ler

On 5/13/2026 at 8:41 PM, Stiddle Mump said:

It you insist that taking vaccines is good for you, them I cannot help you.

After all your nonsense..... this is the best you can muster....pretty sad. and.... turn on your spell/grammer checker!

Please point out where people think that vaccines are anything other than a type of life insurance. Nobody likes paying the insurance premiums but they have loved ones whom they wish to provide for in case of an unfortunate event that kills or incapacitates them. Vaccines are the 'insurance premium'. In and of themselves they are not 'good' for you. Everybody understands this. But as in the case of life insurance, they view vaccines as an overall benefit. I guess you're just not capable of careful long rang planning and risk amelioration.

On 4/30/2026 at 4:47 PM, Gecko123 said:

I never got vaccinated, mainly because only the Sino vaccines were available here in Thailand. Basically, I was holding out for Moderna type vaccines, and they never really showed up.

What? They had all types of vaccines here. What they heck are on about?