SARs-CoV-2 is real and I have no problem with vaccines as one mitigation strategy... among many. But when they act like an experimental product is the only thing that works and then do mass purges of non-compliance on all levels of society - institutions, private sector, government sector and civil rights laws - in order to coerce compliance, there is a major problem. This is so clearly a power/cash grab. Like... suppressing antivirals. Maybe, at worst, they offer a 20% improvement on recovery. Why poo poo that? That 20% could mean the world to someone on a ventilator who is otherwise getting NO treatment.
no one is claiming that vaccines are the only way. people also still commonly mention self isolation if you've been in contact with someone whose tested positive, hand washing, masks, lockdowns, etc. there has been a multi pronged attack from the start that has continued after the vaccine rollout.
using the word 'experimental' for these vaccines at this point is specious. how many more billion people need to receive theirs before its not experimental?
your example of antivirals makes no sense- do you have data on the effectiveness of these, and if so can you link it? from what i've seen they aren't great, certainly way worse performing and they won't prevent transmission caused by infected people prior to presentation at hospital. hospital treatment for covid is vastly, vastly more expensive than vaccination. plus, you're then in hospital. are you really arguing that hospitalisation, ineffective drugs, and long term issues arising from infection should be considered on a par with vaccination as a management strategy?
the antivirals recently approved for use in the UK may be more effective, but certainly would meet your criteria for experimental if you consider vaccines that have been administered billions of times as experimental, so i presume you're against their use? also they are from a class of drugs known to commonly have severe side effects.
anti vaxxers are making so much more money for big pharma now. the drugs commonly given to people with severe covid are so expensive. but they are still stressing out doctors and taking hospital space from people whose illness is not self inflicted.
What troubles me is that people are framing this as "sides"... like I am on one side, and you're on another. I'm not even an anti-vaxxer, I'm just pro-science... real, accredited, broadly-discussed science. The pandemic policy is not based on science as we know it. It's based on hamfisted bureaucracy with cherry picked info. The way science is supposed to work is, if ONE scientist has a credible observation, the rest of the scientific community is supposed to take that, replicate it, and, if the findings contradict the current understanding, modify the paradigm. We're not seeing that right now. Right now we hear mantras of "follow the science", and that should frighten everyone.
cos i totally agree re policy- over here in the UK its fucked. but that's the government.
you seem to have a very idealistic view of real science. no one repeats other peoples experiments. you don't get papers out of that. if the methodology seems cool you'll nick it and if it doesn't work maybe you'll repeat it, but in general, no one is replicating others work. we don't have the money to fund that. i don't agree with that, but i also wouldn't have stayed in research if i was just repeating other peoples work instead of doing original research. the science being done on COVID is, on a whole, more transparent than i have ever seen before in biomedical sciences. and its mostly of a very high standard, though some charlatans have tried to profit (hello ivermectin shillers....) that isn't representative of the total body of work this pandemic has produced.
if you are pro-science, honestly you'd get this vaccine unless you have a condition that prevents you from doing so or never, ever, interact with other human beings.