Personally, I always thought that any medical treatment a person receives should be a choice. Not something that is forced. Of course, I am not talking about those who are not sound of mind (i.e. under the mental health act). In this case, I am talking about rational people deciding whether or not they want to take a particular treatment or not. It’s not about being pro-vaccine, neutral, or anti-vaccine. It’s about the right of an individual to determine what medical treatment they want or do not want, This includes everything from things like cancer treatment using Chemotherapy, or indeed a vaccine.
I thought it was worth reminding the world and everyone here, that there is a choice. Additionally, the Covid-19 vaccines from Oxford-Astra Zeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are all still classed as experimental and are being used under an emergency licence, which indemnifies them from any fall-out should there be future problems (which I hope not).
The one thing everyone seems to have forgotten is that a vaccine takes about 10 years to develop properly. After 2-3 years, we know a lot more about safety, 5 years a even more, and finally 10 years in you have a very good profile of the safety aspects. Additionally, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use mRNA technology, and we do not know too much about the long-term safety of that technology yet. The critical thing that you cannot escape is this: TIME.
Let’s see how the next few years pan out in terms of people’s health. So far, ~1500 people are suspected of having died in the UK from the Covid-19 vaccines : “The MHRA has received 425 UK reports of suspected ADRs to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in which the patient died shortly after vaccination, 904 reports for the COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca, 5 for the COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna and 22 where the brand of vaccine was unspecified.”