How do we unite against Covid 19?
Worried about vaccine hesitancy?
What should the government do to improve health outcomes?
If you are worried that unvaccinated people will expose you to ill health, rest easy. The vaccine does not actually stop transmission through the general population.
Unfortunately, the widely publicised initial promise of the Pfizer vaccine (exclusively used in NZ) to virtually eradicate Covid has proved to be unfounded.
Yes, it will reduce the severity of the disease, but research shows its protective effects drop off quite quickly.
The single most important factor affecting covid outcomes is general health.
Overwhelmingly, comorbidities affect the severity of the disease progression. These include (in no particular order)
- uncontrolled hypertension
- obesity
- diabetes
- alcohol use
- weakened immune system
- certain medications (of which there are many)
- excessive fatigue
- shift work
- heart conditions
- liver and kidney conditions
- asthma
- smoking
- gender
- ethnicity
- advanced age
- poverty and crowded living conditions
- cancer
- cystic fibrosis
- sickle cell anaemia
- pregnancy
- dementia
- stress
- and substance abuse.
Now is a great time to improve your health habits.
A few of the above causes of covid severity are under the control of the individual.
If it affects you, give up smoking, cut down on alcohol use, increase exercise, rest more, drink more fluids, and eat a more balanced diet including more whole grains, less ultra-processed food, and five portions of fresh fruit and vegetables a day.
The Government Too Can and Should Help You
They can abolish GST on fresh fruit and vegetables, introduce a tax on excess sugar and hard fats, and offer educational programmes such as those pioneered by Jamie Oliver in schools.
Why are some people hesitant about taking the vaccine?
Historically vaccines have been very safe.
This is because they went through trials and assessments over many years before being authorized.
Covid vaccines have been granted emergency authorisation only, they have not been subjected to extended trials and analysis of outcomes.
Because of the general historical assumption of safety, reporting of vaccine adverse reactions is not mandatory.
As a result, Covid vaccine adverse reactions are greatly unreported.
There are persistent reports of vaccine adverse reactions.
For example, there were over 34,000 reports registered on Jacinda Ardern’s FB page.
Recently a number of countries have back tracked on mandatory vaccinations for people under thirty due to safety concerns.
The gap in our safety data can be easily filled if the government were to update the vaccine adverse reaction reporting procedure to make it mandatory and also undertake analysis of the data to determine if the pattern of reported reactions diverges from the known health statistics of the general population.
This normal check of vaccine safety is currently missing in NZ and in most countries.
Write to your MP and ask the government to do more to encourage the general health of the population, keep the public fully informed, and insist on an updated vaccine safety procedure.
Full information and open discussion of the science go a long way to reducing fears and alleviating stress.
Thank you for sharing this post widely.
