Your introduction should emphasise your idea of choice about vaccination, as you are opposed to it being compulsory. You could also make a comparison with existing vaccination policies (eg the "no jab, no play" policy for pre-schoolers) and the assumption that people opposed to vacciniation for COVID are prepared to take up other obligations to protect themselves and others (eg a committment to mask wearing and acceptance of 'exclusion' strategies). You should also emphasise your main points more clearly - remember that your audience is going to hear your presentation once only and you want them to hear your main points clearly. So your main points are: that the vaccines have known limitations, vaccination programs may need to be constantly repeated so people can receive "booster shots," new variants may make the current vaccines ineffective, "breakthrough cases" can occur, some people cannot be vaccinated because of underlying health conditions, data on the performance of the vaccines (outside of clinical trials) is still very limited. You have a lot of ideas but it would be better to try to limit this to your favourite three points. Don't forget to emphasise the idea of "choice" - you are trying to persuade your audience that a COVID vaccination should be your choice to make your own decision, rather than being compelled by a mandatory program. State premiers have also been reluctant to enforce vaccinations (apart from for those who work in health care and in the quarantine hotels) and you might like to use some of their comments to back your position on this issue. I've attached some comments - sorry I'm a bit klutzy with this.
DRAFT#3 COVID-19 VACCINATION
It was New Year’s Eve 2019 when the Chinese authorities notified the world that a virus was spreading through their communities. The Virus was causing a dry cough, headaches, and fever before causing pneumonia to its victim which made it fatal. In the following months, it spread to other countries, with cases doubling within days. This virus is the severe acute respiratory syndrome-Related Coronavirus 2 or SARS-COV-2 that causes the disease called Covid-19 and that everyone simply calls coronavirus. By today many companies from all around the world have made vaccines from AstraZeneca based in the UK to the Sputnik V based in Russia. Many countries have since started to vaccinate their populations with these vaccines. But this begs the question should a covid-19 vaccine be mandatory for all a country’s citizens?
Recently we have seen steep spikes in COVID-19 cases around the globe especially in India – show covid chart cases of India- and Indonesia with millions of cases due to the new Delta SARS-CoV-2 variant. Developed nations and their respective leaders are debating whether or not vaccines should be mandatory for their citizens to save them from getting hit by new waves of COVID-19. Some people argue that the promising “clinical trial” rates show that the vaccines are effective but with new virus mutations, and the in capabilities of vaccines’ performance in real life and other factors some experts outright reject the idea of covid-19 vaccines being mandatory.
It appears, that at this point in time, making vaccines mandatory will not be suitable due to its many setbacks. Firstly, it would never eradicate the coronavirus completely, people vaccinated may still transmit the virus and secondly, the current generation of vaccines might get outdated and useless as we see new deadly mutations of the virus. So how will this and all the debate around vaccines effect you and your health?
While the current vaccines have proven to be highly effective against the novel corona virus that has caused the pandemic, recent data has highlighted the emergence of several deadly mutational strains like the Delta strain. There has been much uncertainty as to whether the current vaccines will protect against these variants. Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester states “Many of us are scrambling to make sense of the new variants, and the million-dollar question is what significance this will have for the effectiveness of vaccines that are currently being administered,”. The effectiveness of the first-generation vaccines would be greatly decreased by the new discovery of the 4 new deadly mutations “Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta” Delta being the one of most concern. With these mutations these vaccines might become impracticable for stopping the rise of covid cases day by day.
The vaccines aim to stop transmission but its important for these vaccines to control mutations as this is the real defining factor of COVID-19 than other viruses. So, the current generation vaccines are not solely focused on this issue which is alarming and only vaccines with such capabilities should be approved for mandatory vaccinations.
We have heard it all since the pandemic started — lemon juice could kill the coronavirus, masks do not work, if you already had COVID-19 you cannot get it again or that the vaccines approved for emergency use will change your DNA or put a tracking device in your body. Despite these myths and superstitions more than 7 million people have at least got a dose or are fully vaccinated. But is this good news?
Not entirely, Vaccines’ primary purpose is to prevent people from getting sick with the virus, and it quickly became clear the vaccines are highly efficient at doing just that. For example clinical trials from Pfizer and Moderna showed that the 95% of people vaccinated had a lower risk of contracting COVID-19.
However, even the best vaccines, we have been not perfect, which means some vaccinated people may still end up catching the virus and transmitting it. Although there is evidence of a significant reduction in transmission from vaccinated people it really does not depend on the rate of transmission as, these “Breakthrough cases”, cases of vaccinated people contracting COVID-19 or transmitting it, have been recently occurring in Australia itself. There is a special concern for the elderly people who might still get infected from vaccinated people. Infectious disease specialist Dr Lyssette Cardona states “The elderly, those with immune or chronic health conditions or those with underlying health disorders may not have the best protective response to vaccines, such as the COVID-19 vaccines.”
So, the vaccines might stop most of the population, mostly comprised of young people, from getting the various symptoms of the disease, but it might still spread the virus to vulnerable people like the elderly and children who have weak immune responses.
Making vaccines compulsory might not affect or may even worsen the situation, so instead of vaccinations we must focus on herd immunity from previous infections for the safety of the immune compromised and elderly we can also improve the restriction system of COVID-19. In place.
While this is the case, the experts and researchers who side with mandatory vaccine rollouts claim that these mandatory vaccine roll outs will be able to reduce the rate and number of infections by covid 19 these experts support their claims by referring to promising efficacy rates of many vaccines for example Pfizer has an efficacy rate of 95%, Moderna 94%, Astra Zeneca 62-90% and /Sputnik V 92%
BUT
The efficacy rates only represent the effectiveness rate of the vaccine in clinical trials which means that the effectiveness of the vaccines in real time would not be same for these vaccines. Even if these vaccines are effective, they might become outdated with the new deadly mutated variants of the virus because most of the vaccine work by the parts of the covid-19 virus for example the spike proteins and RNA.
In December 2020, Israel initiated a national campaign to vaccinate its population with Pfizer–BioNTech's mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. Israel's Ministry of Health recommended a two-dose schedule with a 21-day interval between doses. Israel delivered more than 10 million doses within 4 months; by April 19, 2021, 54% of the entire population of 9·1 million people, and 88% of people aged 50 years or older, had received two doses.
- SHOW ISRAEL VACCINATION GRAPH-
- SHOW CHILE GRAPH-
By comparing both graphs we clearly see that the demographics and the management system of both countries influence how vaccines might perform in real life situations. We can clearly see that vaccinations might not produce the results we always want so it might not always reduce cases like all the efficacy rates of these vaccines have pointed out.
Vaccines have been an integral part of eliminating deadly viruses from the face of earth however the making of covid vaccination might be too soon seeing its many setbacks, instead of trying to vaccinate people and trying to eliminate the virus we can strive to stop it from spreading but abiding by restrictions. COVID-19 vaccines might be too early and might not be worth of the time and investment right now so join me in this journey to defend against the mandating of covid vaccines in Australia and the rest of the World.
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