I didn't expect this "novel coronavirus" to mutate so quickly, therefore when I told people not to worry, they would only get it once, I was wrong.
Yes, you will only get each new variant once (probably), but this Matryoshka Doll of the virus world (if it's real, etc.) just keeps releasing new version after new version for the population to get-- each seemingly weaker than the predecessors, but still annoying to the people who catch them. The last time I got it, though, I wouldn't have even noticed if someone else hadn't had it first, so "annoying" is in the eye of the beholder.
As soon as I heard the first reports of this new coronavirus spreading around the world I looked into what, exactly, a "coronavirus" was, and what I found caused me to instantly shrug it off as no real threat to me. I've wondered whether the online information has since been altered to make the topic scarier, but I've not cared enough to check.
Personally, I'm glad I never got the shots. I'm not scared of the shots, nor am I scared of the virus. I don't like needles, but they don't scare me. They just hurt and I avoid pain unless the payoff is-- in my mind-- worth it. In this case, it wasn't. Not even close.
If I had gotten the shots and had a bad reaction I would have felt dumber than if I had a bad reaction from the virus after refusing the shots. And if I had the shots and got the virus anyway and then had a bad reaction from either one, I would have felt totally stupid.
But you do you-- it doesn't bother me if your choice is different than mine. Maybe you enjoy needles-- maybe you get really sick when you catch a cold (I know those who do)-- maybe your job threatened you. Whatever. It's your business what you do-- I don't feel violated either way, even if you shed spike proteins or something. I'm past caring.
But it is interesting to me how many still care. Deeply. I see people on both sides still trying to insist that their way was the right way, and the opposite way was wrong (and based in fear). To me, it looks like people arguing over whether a blade of grass under a tree on the other side of the valley, viewed through binoculars, is bluish-green or greenish blue-- even after a gopher ate it and it's gone.
I was wrong about my biggest statement about the virus... and it probably made no difference then, makes no difference now, and will not make a difference in the future. That's about as inconsequential as anything can get. Probably even more inconsequential than worrying about which political criminal wins political office next election, and whether "your v*te" would make a difference.
The "official" response to the virus was much worse than anything about the virus, and that's one thing I wasn't wrong about. It's a safe prediction in any situation. We are still suffering the consequences and probably will be for decades to come. Thanks, Authoritarian Idiots.
I somewhat expected SARS-COV-2 to mutate even more quickly than it did. "The common cold" viruses are (some of them, anyway) coronaviruses, and the reason we don't have a vaccine for them is that you can't swing a cat without hitting ten new mutations.
ReplyDeleteThey probably have another thing in common: We have NO idea how many people various versions of "the common cold" killed early on. The thing that gives you the sniffles today may have been a large-scale killer when it first arrived on the human infectious diseases scene.
I personally "got the shots" because I had an opportunity to volunteer as a guinea pig (and even get paid for it), which is kind of a hobby of mine.
FDA finally issued an EUA for the vaccine I got (Novavax), which isn't mRNA and which I assume was what resulted in me being the only person in my household (four other people, three of them vaxxed with Pfizer/Moderna, and they all went down with it at pretty much the same time) who didn't test positive or get sick despite spending ten days in close proximity to the others while they were ill.
Like everything else, vaccination should be an individual, unforced choice.
And you're absolutely right that the long-term effects of the state's response to COVID-19 will be orders of magnitude worse than the virus itself ever was.
I never even thought of mutations for some odd reason. Which feels uncharacteristic.
DeleteOf course, we don't know how many mutations there really are, since we only know about the ones we were told about-- the ones "they" wanted to tell us about. There are undoubtedly many times more. We were probably told about a very small tip of a gigantic iceberg. Maybe we only hear about the ones that made a noticeable difference, or maybe we only hear about the "useful" mutations.