Are:
Indeed. It is also disrespectful of the media to publish, and even actively promote, such sentiments.
I'd be careful what you ask for - I recall articles from 20-30 years ago bemoaning the low priority given to TB, and advocating much stronger public health responses, including testing.
Cull them, it's the only way to stop it spreading in an uncontrolled manner in the wild.
No, anti vax, Covid denial and not having had the vaccine are not the same thing. They are three separate things, but where drawn as a Venn diagram, there is a very high degree of overlap - which with the combination of the political positions taken by many and the numbers who have accepted vaccines in countries like the UK is enough to make the casual elision far less unreasonable than your other comparisons.
Cull them, it's the only way to stop it spreading in an uncontrolled manner in the wild.
Perhaps it is just a different culture from another country.
It was the BBC that published it.
The vast majority of the benefit from vaccines is to the over 50s. If you're under 30 then it's entirely possible to believe that vaccines are safe, effective and absolutely vital in the fight against Covid, but not really worth the effort for you personally. If you define anti-vax in a way that takes in such a person then it unclear whether the word means anything useful at all.
Because an anti-vaxxer is ideologically opposed to all vaccines, and considers it their duty to dissuade others from being vaccinated against anything. How many people who’ve declined the Covid vaccine fit that description?
Having researched the subject to the best of my ability, I decided that as I’m low risk I’d rather benefit from the long(er?) lasting and broader protection offered by natural immunity, in the first instance at least. Statistically it was probably more risky I accept that, however the risk was so low as to be insignificant. Whilst you may disagree with my decision (as is your right of course) it was an informed choice, and certainly had nothing to do with lizards, 5G or microchips!
I watched it on Twitter. Was apprehensive earlier when it was announced but I was most pleased (and relieved!) to hear Bojo say that we can “ride out” this wave, in part “thanks to Omicron being less severe” without needing to “close the country”.
These points of view are one end of the distribution curve. At the other end of the curve are zero-covid supporters, vaccine mandate supporters/fanatics, extreme lockdown supporters, etc. In the middle lies the overwhelming majority of the population who support and/or disagree with aspects of our covid response and vaccines, but hold no extreme point of view on anything.No, anti vax, Covid denial and not having had the vaccine are not the same thing. They are three separate things, but where drawn as a Venn diagram, there is a very high degree of overlap - which with the combination of the political positions taken by many and the numbers who have accepted vaccines in countries like the UK is enough to make the casual elision far less unreasonable than your other comparisons.
I largely agree with you on that, but with one caveat. There's a strand of belief in personal good living - right exercise, right food, etc. - that has a side effect of denial of the role of medicine in ensuring the individual's continued good health. That belief is one strand of the anti-vaxx movement, and seems to be at the heart of many of the tragedies where patients have asked for vaccination when already hospital in patients. If these twins, as reported, did express regret at not being vaccinated, that doesn't especially surprise me - it's been reported by a fair number of doctors, and seems associated with two dawning realisations - first, that the patient had made the wrong choice, and second that this decision couldn't be reversed.
This seems a strange comment, quite possibly a symptom of the unwelcome corruption of the English language that is all too commonplace these days. It's a modern thing for people to say they have flu when they actually just have a cold. If you have flu you're likely to be unable to get out of bed for a couple of days, and you certainly would feel ill.
Perhaps I should say I'm literally splitting my sides laughing at this - to use another inappropriate corruption of our language!
I agree, though I think the curve is skewed with more at the "anti-vaxx" end of the spectrum than in the zero-Covid camp. That opinion, entirely subjective, is based on the numbers of people who haven't taken vaccines, some assumptions about reasons and comparing them with the zero-Covid brigade who are highly concentrated in certain professions.
I don't know how much of the population supports zero-covid, but the anti-vax camp will be less than 10%: 90% of those eligible for at least 1 dose have one, and of the remaining 10% they will be split into those who can't get vaccinated for medical reasons, being hesitant about a relatively new vaccine, and blatant anti-vaxxers. Chances are that the latter group will be considerably smaller than 10% as a result. The only ones not eligible are those under 12, and many of them won't have a concept of being anti-vax.
I would love to see the evidence of that. I suspect there is an overlap but how much? No-one seems willing to put any actual survey results out there.
His speech has been good untilI watched it on Twitter. Was apprehensive earlier when it was announced but I was most pleased (and relieved!) to hear Bojo say that we can “ride out” this wave, in part “thanks to Omicron being less severe” without needing to “close the country”.
For the first and last time in my life, well done Boris!
You can, but the vast majority of people don't
Sorry, I might not have been as clear as I meant to be - my point was that tb is suffering from the attention given to COVID and we should be reprioritising. But at the same time given how "background" TB is, despite being much more serious, the precedent is there to let COVID take a back seat in priorities.
