Try this link:
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Thank you bhante. NY Times has a limited number of free reads, so I could still read it.
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This doesn’t seem to be true:
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/vaccines-will-not-produce-worse-variants
There is, then, every reason at both the population and individual level to expect that vaccination will strongly decrease the chances of a more dangerous coronavirus strain taking hold. If we’d had them earlier and were able to deploy them quickly and widely enough, we never would have seen the Delta variant in the first place. If we keep deploying them now, we will keep worse variants from even being able to form. Anyone who tells you that vaccines will make things worse is at best deeply misinformed and at worst lying to you for profit.
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaccine-variants-idUSL2N2NL1M2
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Childhood vaccines are a fact of life, and has saved millions of children from death and disability for the last half a century or so
To me it seems many people in this anti-vax movement are a by-product of societies where the majority of children and adults do not die of preventable diseases. Of course there are exceptions.
If everyone lost a child to a preventable disease, I’m sure their views would change pretty fast….
Look what the impact of conspiracy theories has had on polio inoculation in Pakistan/Afghanistan
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The way that I read the AN 65: With the Kālāmas of Kesamutta is that this Sutta gives a perspective on how to consider and weigh various views and evidence, in order to make skillful decisions that lead to a “mind that’s free of enmity and ill will, undefiled and purified.”
Please, Kālāmas, don’t go by oral transmission, don’t go by lineage, don’t go by testament, don’t go by canonical authority, don’t rely on logic, don’t rely on inference, don’t go by reasoned contemplation, don’t go by the acceptance of a view after consideration, don’t go by the appearance of competence, and don’t think ‘The ascetic is our respected teacher.’ But when you know for yourselves: ‘These things are skillful, blameless, praised by sensible people, and when you undertake them, they lead to welfare and happiness’, then you should acquire them and keep them.
Individually, we can weigh the evidence on an issue, and assess the credibility of the experts that offer opinions about an issue. Sometimes, we have to concede that the governments that we elect are expected to act in the best interests of a community or country, especially in public health matters. Governments are, of course, corrupt and deceptive, but sometimes in matters of public health the best interests of both the people and the community must be protected by unpopular measures.
In my city, if your home is found to have asbestos in its siding or walls, you cannot do work on the building without remediating the asbestos, at great cost. An individual homeowner might object angrily to this, with the idea that “this is my home, and no one can tell me how to renovate it!” The reason for these laws is that science has agreed, by consensus, that when asbestos fibers get released into the air, that people exposed to the fibers can get very sick, and die. So, governments mandate rules around this. We also have rules that apply to using seat belts and wearing helmets while on a motorcycle, which some people feel infringes on their personal liberties.
There’s a global scientific consensus that the COVID vaccines save lives, both of the recipients, and of those around them. Mandating vaccination and masks seems to have a benefit to individuals, as well as to the community at large. Sometimes, governments need to require certain steps, like wearing seat belts or receiving vaccines, in exchange for the right to drive a car, or to fly on an airplane.
I understand the psychology of folks that find these mandates objectionable; here in the US, we have a large number of people, including religious evangelicals, that refuse to be told what to do and how to live their lives by the government. We have politicians comparing vaccine mandates to Nazi occupations and Holocaust camps.
I’m not a scientist, and so I don’t know what effect my three jabs of Moderna will do to me over time. I do know that I am at peace with the idea that I am less likely to die from COVID, and that by practicing the protocols from the CDC, I am able to protect those around me. If I get COVID, it’s likely the ICU unit I would have taken space in can be used by a car accident victim, or a stroke patient; I can treat at home without worry of serious illness. And so, as the Buddha suggested, I’ve won the “four consolations in the present life.” I feel I have done what was most skillful, most compassionate to others, and without anger or enmity, I can go forward on this path with a mind more suited to samadhi.
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Hi Snowbird,
Thank you for engaging the conversation with a reference point. I have given a read at the link you provided and digged a little into the references.
So essentially, the article’s core argument hinges on a single study that has not been peer-reviewed as yet.
Actually, someone commented on the study, linking to peer-reviewed publications from Nature and Nature Medicine:
The authors report, based only on 47 cases studied, that unvaccinated patients share significantly more genomic mutational similarities with the variants of concern than patients with a breakthrough infection.
This finding is interesting, but it requires statistically significant evaluation and verification.
Especially since
- in vitro, the selection pressure imposed by the antibodies, induced by the vaccines, has led to the emergence of new variants of SARS-CovV-2 (1);
- in vivo, the case of a severe and prolonged form of infection by SARS-CoV-2, treated with antibodies taken from convalescents, favored the appearance of a variant. The variants decreased when the treatment with the injected antibodies was stopped and reappeared with new doses of the injected antibodies. In the absence of the antibodies, the wild strains again became the majority (2).
In addition, the following findings by the authors tend to favor selective pressure exerted by vaccinations:
- the diversity of SARS-CoV-2 lines decreases at country level with an increased rate of mass vaccination (negatively correlated with the increase in the rate of mass vaccination in the countries analyzed);
- The decline in lineage diversity is coupled with the increased dominance of variants of concern;
- vaccine breakthrough patients harbor viruses with significantly lower diversity compared to unvaccinated COVID-19 patients.
The question still remains open, whether vaccination should not be limited to only vulnerable people in the world population, in analogy with a risk calculator for the population proposed by American scientists (3).
- Wang, Z., Schmidt, F., Weisblum, Y. et al. mRNA vaccine-elicited antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 and circulating variants. Nature 592, 616–622 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41…
- Kemp, S.A., Collier, D.A., Datir, R.P. et al. SARS-CoV-2 evolution during treatment of chronic infection. Nature 592, 277–282 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41…
- Jin, J., Agarwala, N., Kundu, P. et al. Individual and community-level risk for COVID-19 mortality in the United States. Nat Med 27, 264–269 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41…
So it seems to me that the science may not be as clear cut on the matter as the author of the article suggests. Which is why I think we should all be cautious around claims about covid science made in the media.
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Malone recently tweeted a peer-reviewed study:
By tracking the evolutionary trajectories of vaccine-resistant mutations in more than 2.2 million SARS-CoV-2 genomes, we reveal that the occurrence and frequency of vaccine-resistant mutations correlate strongly with the vaccination rates in Europe and America. We anticipate that as a complementary transmission pathway, vaccine-breakthrough or antibody-resistant mutations, like those in Omicron, will become a dominating mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 evolution when most of the world’s population is either vaccinated or infected.
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Could I respectfully ask to stay on the O.P. please. That is; the role of ‘views’ in the conflicts surrounding Co-vid.
This topic is not about discussing the relative merits of individual views themselves, or contents of studies, but to raise awareness of how views function (or can be dysfunctional) in general terms.
At the beginning of Covid the Mod team made a decision that posts around medical advice etc etc would not be suitable for this forum. Information can be sourced by people directly.
