tl;dr
Earlier I didn’t take the shot because I wasn’t sure it was good for me. But now? Now I’m not taking the shot because I’m taking a stand.
I’m taking a stand because if people like me don’t stand up against what’s going on in the world right now then things will only get harder and weirder and scarier for other people like me. I’m worried that if we don’t get off this path soon, it’s going to get harder and harder to turn back. And I don’t want to see where that ends up.
more
Well, around this time, we also started seeing evidence that the vaccine protection against infection was waning pretty quickly. About a month after I became eligible for my shot, a paper came out of Israel indicating that vaccine effectiveness against infection dropped to 50 or 60% after 6 months. And on top of that we saw evidence that vaccinated people carry equal viral loads and spread the disease as much (though for a shorter duration) as unvaccinated people.
I concluded that there was a benefit to being vaccinated to protect those around me, but that it might be short-lived—or require boosting—to stay above a compelling threshold. And also that I could likely do just as much to protect those around me by continuing to only see people outside, wear a mask, etc.
The other thing that became clear during this time was that Covid would become endemic. That is—we would not be able to stop its spread, and would have to learn to live with it in our lives. This meant that most of the measures we were taking weren’t stopping people from getting the disease, they were just delaying it. If getting vaccinated meant I could prevent a Covid illness, that was pretty compelling. But if it only meant pushing the illness back a few months, that was a bit less remarkable. Still beneficial—by spreading the strain on health systems or allowing more time for new treatments to come out—just not nearly as much.
These factors created a backdrop where I could see that getting vaccinated meant stepping onto a treadmill of sorts. A treadmill that didn’t have any clear stopping criteria. The immunity would go, but the virus would stay. And to continue to be a responsible citizen I’d have to keep topping up my immunity.
tl;dr
>Earlier I didn’t take the shot because I wasn’t sure it was good for me. But now? Now I’m not taking the shot because I’m taking a stand.
>
>I’m taking a stand because if people like me don’t stand up against what’s going on in the world right now then things will only get harder and weirder and scarier for other people like me. I’m worried that if we don’t get off this path soon, it’s going to get harder and harder to turn back. And I don’t want to see where that ends up.
more
>Well, around this time, we also started seeing evidence that the vaccine protection against infection was waning pretty quickly. About a month after I became eligible for my shot, a paper came out of Israel indicating that vaccine effectiveness against infection dropped to 50 or 60% after 6 months. And on top of that we saw evidence that vaccinated people carry equal viral loads and spread the disease as much (though for a shorter duration) as unvaccinated people.
>
>I concluded that there was a benefit to being vaccinated to protect those around me, but that it might be short-lived—or require boosting—to stay above a compelling threshold. And also that I could likely do just as much to protect those around me by continuing to only see people outside, wear a mask, etc.
>
>The other thing that became clear during this time was that Covid would become endemic. That is—we would not be able to stop its spread, and would have to learn to live with it in our lives. This meant that most of the measures we were taking weren’t stopping people from getting the disease, they were just delaying it. If getting vaccinated meant I could prevent a Covid illness, that was pretty compelling. But if it only meant pushing the illness back a few months, that was a bit less remarkable. Still beneficial—by spreading the strain on health systems or allowing more time for new treatments to come out—just not nearly as much.
>
>These factors created a backdrop where I could see that getting vaccinated meant stepping onto a treadmill of sorts. A treadmill that didn’t have any clear stopping criteria. The immunity would go, but the virus would stay. And to continue to be a responsible citizen I’d have to keep topping up my immunity.
(post is archived)