COVID-19 & vaccination

I feel that I have to make a post on this again.  People continue to deny that COVID exists, or in a latest series of tweets, one person is stating that side effects from the vaccine are being covered up.

Just a reminder, COVID-19 exists.  It has killed loads.  I have treated patients during the Swine Flu pandemic as well as other bad years of influenza, and this is worse.  I help care for a nursing home which was devastated when COVID managed to get in.  Many died quickly and thanks to planning, peacefully.  However, the surgery I work in has had many patients admitted to hospital. None who we have sent in have affected by the shortness of breath that this condition causes compares this to influenza as those patients have already had to ring 999 to get there.

Our local hospital now has less people affected by COVID-19 in it.  The children's ward at one time had adult patients on it and there was a time that emergency operations were not being carried out, instead the only operations taking place being life or death ones.  When people talk about the death rates of COVID and compare it to influenza, they forget that for many, death does not come quickly.  Patients who die, and those who survive, often are given help to breathe.  This can be oxygen, CPAP, or ventilation, and the amount of people requiring this has overwhelmed the NHS in our area.  Such support can require stays in hospital of weeks, again, something that was not seen on such a large scale in any of the years that Flu has caused strain to the NHS.

But onto the claims of this tweeter, stating that vaccinations are causing side effects that are being covered up.  They are wrong.  There is no way of knowing for certain if there are going to be long term consequences of the vaccine, but we do know that there are long term consequences from surviving COVID infections.  People spreading scare stories about vaccinations that can save lives when we know that there are both short and long term consequences of COVID are, to put it politely, silly.