2 COVID Vaccines Approved, End to Pandemic in Sight??

[Merlin]

I think the "scam" part is not that Covid doesn't exist, but it's about the lockdowns being the answer.  This is decimating our economy, and many kids I know (teens, early 20's) are experiencing VERY difficult mental issues at this point.  Some are TERRIFIED for no reason (only 2 people under the age of 18 have died in CA, it's that rare).  But in most cases, the isolation is literally killing kids.  Suicides are up.  This whole thing is just nuts.

Many experts have provided roadmaps that show that we could deal with Covid without lockdowns with proper preparation. Like more circulation and better filtration systems inside buildings, less time spent inside, and 100% mask use and physical distancing in public. Along with mandatory testing and tracing, of course. The problem is that not all companies are willing to invest the money necessary to upgrade their HVAC systems and a ton of people don't want to deal with masks and physical distancing. Our government also hasn't put any kind of plan in place to help mitigate and reduce the problem via increased testing and contact tracing. However, if we had implemented all these things, we wouldn't need to be in lockdown and our economy wouldn't be in so much trouble.

We probably wouldn't have as many Covid-related suicides as well. Since so many people wouldn't be dealing with diminished stress surge capacity and/or Covid depression.

There is something going on here that just doesn't add up. [...]

I'm just not buying it.  I don't think we've been given all of the facts [...]

I also agree that we don't have all the facts, but if you compare what we do know from different places around the world, this is clearly not limited to the US. There are companies all over the world working on this. I have to assume they are all working as quickly as possible to figure out the best way to deal with this virus and get a vaccine out. Some processes will naturally faster or slower. But, if certain people or companies were stalling or holding onto information waiting for the US election to be done, some other company would have beat them to a solution since it is extremely unlikely that all these companies are conspiring together. That seems obvious to me anyway.

Personally, I don't believe the claims of 90% and 95% efficacy are legit unless the virus is far more fragile and easier to manage than we've been led to believe. My belief is that those statistics may be accurate in the small samples, but these trials are too small to have meaningful statistical value when compared against the population of the world. We know they are cutting some corners to get this out the door quickly to help save lives, so there are bound to be variables that haven't been considered, or ethnicities and medical histories that have were not represented in the sample set used for their trials. When these drugs finally get EU authorization, the first round will effectively be a real stage 3 trial, just a more uncontrolled one. That is when we're going to see the real-world effectiveness of these vaccines and how safe they really are.

I hope I'm wrong and these vaccines are amazing and do exactly what they say. But until I see this for myself, I remain skeptical. I also want to see what comes of the other 10 major vaccines in development. There are several different approaches, so it may be that others are as (or more) effective and may be more durable as well.