That seems worth checking.
US flu deaths per year over the last 10 years ranged from 12000 to 61000, averaging 35900 [1]. That's 3.7 to 18.6 per 100k, averaging 10.9 per 100k.
Weekly COVID deaths among vaccinated people is 0.1 per 100k [2].
The flu season is typically about 8 months. A weekly death rate of 0.1 per 100k over 8 months would be 3.5 per 100k.
So...about 1/3 the risk of dying from from flu in an average flu year which arguably is indeed "far below".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_influenza_statis...
As it is today, it seems like flu deaths are far less frequent than covid deaths. Cherry picked link but it _is_ the cdc.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm
>Among the 3,388 PIC deaths reported for this week, 2,785 had COVID-19 listed as an underlying or contributing cause of death on the death certificate, and three listed influenza, indicating that current PIC mortality is due primarily to COVID-19 and not influenza.
Comparing masked-flu to masked-covid is valid.
Of course, if you're doing that comparison, it may also be worth mentioning that the flu also has a vaccine and if you're vaccinated against the flu too, its less dangerous than covid.
I’m also not entirely sure how good surveillance is for the flu? I could imagine it being recorded as “pneumonia” or “respiratory arrest”, especially when it affects poorer people, or those not admitted to hospitals.
(please not that the two issues above would pull any conclusion into opposite directions, then reflect on the relative amounts of hate and love, respectively, before deciding that I must be wrong because disagree)
That's still depressingly high, and the 0.1 rate doesn't is before July 17th, so wouldn't really account for the Delta variant? COVID is no joke.
We're now facing an endemic virus which, even with vaccination, approaches (or could get as bad as) the deadliness of the flu.
Here’s where you went wrong.
Your number is not based on efficacy last week. It’s cumulative!
The vaccine efficacy wanes. For those who get a vaccine 8 months ago, it’s almost worthless now.
The worst part of you logic, you lump all risk groups together! A 90 year old is not a 20 year old. Argh! People have been doing this, even public health people, since the beginning of the pandemic. Teenagers and children have never been at risk really. It’s not about you, it’s about high risk groups. Old people, obese people with diabetes over a certain age.
I get so very frustrated.
You need to back this claim up with data please.
[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2113
““In my opinion, a reasonable worst case scenario could see protection below 50% for elderly people and healthcare workers by winter,” he said. “If there are high levels of infection in the UK, driven by loosened social restrictions and a highly transmissible variant, this scenario could mean increased hospitalisations and deaths. We urgently need to make plans for vaccine boosters and decide if a strategy to vaccinate children is sensible.””
See also https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262423v...
Nothing past 6 months or so yet, but again the original British report which is discussed in the bmj article shows trend lines and it’s easy to extrapolate if you are good with charts/data.
"The overall age-adjusted vaccine effectiveness against infection for all New York adults declined from 91.7% to 79.8%." - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
"Two doses of mRNA vaccines were 74.7% effective against infection among nursing home residents early in the vaccination program (March–May 2021). During June–July 2021, when B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant circulation predominated, effectiveness declined significantly to 53.1%." - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e3.htm?s_cid=mm...
"The efficacy figure, which is based on an unspecified number of people between June 20 and July 17, is down from an earlier estimate of 64% two weeks ago and conflicts with data out of the U.K. that found the shot was 88% effective against symptomatic disease caused by the variant." - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/delta-variant-pfizer-covid-v...
"“As seen in real world data released from the Israel Ministry of Health, vaccine efficacy in preventing both infection and symptomatic disease has declined six months post-vaccination, although efficacy in preventing serious illnesses remains high,” the companies said in a written statement. “These findings are consistent with an ongoing analysis from the Companies’ Phase 3 study,” they said. “That is why we have said, and we continue to believe that it is likely, based on the totality of the data we have to date, that a third dose may be needed within 6 to 12 months after full vaccination.” ...... Executives from Pfizer and BioNtech have repeatedly said people will likely need a booster shot, or third dose, within 12 months of getting fully vaccinated because they expect vaccine-induced immunity to wane over time. They also said it’s likely people will need to get additional shots each year." - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/08/pfizer-says-it-is-developing...
So, while it's true that the effectiveness wanes, the same articles also point out that it is still effective at preventing severe hospitalization. If you're vaccinated, you're more likely after 6 months to get COVID anyway, but you are much less likely to be sent to the hospital or die.
77% efficacy against infection for Pfizer, 92% efficacy against infection for Moderna in the US.
Really wish people would stop saying vaccines have waned to uselessness. That just isn't even true for VE against infection. All the studies that I see at the lower level of ~50% VE against infection are highly problematic (there was a study of healthcare workers in San Diego where their unvaccinated control was only monitored via PCR for infection and only had a 3x increase of infections during the delta spike in Jul which suggests their unvaccinated controls had a significant amount of natural resistance or were taking many more precautions).
Your claim is frustrating because it is inaccurate and misleading.
"Vaccine efficacy, effectiveness and protection"
https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/vaccine...
Vaccine efficacy is found in trials, vaccine effectiveness is dynamic depending WHEN you calculate it and its found after 'deployment in the field'
"A vaccine’s efficacy is measured in a controlled clinical trial and is based on how many people who got vaccinated developed the ‘outcome of interest’ (usually disease) compared with how many people who got the placebo (dummy vaccine) developed the same outcome. Once the study is complete, the numbers of sick people in each group are compared, in order to calculate the relative risk of getting sick depending on whether or not the subjects received the vaccine. From this we get the efficacy – a measure of how much the vaccine lowered the risk of getting sick. If a vaccine has high efficacy, a lot fewer people in the group who received the vaccine got sick than the people in the group who received the placebo."
vs
"Vaccine effectiveness is a measure of how well vaccines work in the real world. Clinical trials include a wide range of people – a broad age range, both sexes, different ethnicities and those with known medical conditions – but they cannot be a perfect representation of the whole population. The efficacy seen in clinical trials applies to specific outcomes in a clinical trial . Effectiveness is measured by observing how well the vaccines work to protect communities as a whole. Effectiveness in the real world can differ from the efficacy measured in a trial, because we can’t predict exactly how effective vaccination will be for a much bigger and more variable population getting vaccinated in more real life conditions."
This very article is titled “experts say booster shots not needed”. Less frustrated people are statistically more likely to get that this means the essential benefits of vaccination have not (or not yet) deteriorated significantly.
As to with data from all age groups, they do so for both the value and the comparison. If you feel the need to split each population into subgroups, you would need continue doing so once you find, for example, what differs from the 20-year old that died vs the one that didn’t. In the end, each person would have their own group, because they all differ. But try doing any comparisons, then.
As far as age groups go, isn't there a pretty high correlation between high risk age groups for flu and high risk age groups for COVID?
As far as vaccine efficacy goes, the comment I decided to try to check the data on was comparing deaths, not infections. The mRNA vaccines in the US have had only a slight drop in the effectiveness at preventing death.
1 ) painting an individual politically by extrapolating a single opinion across their entire persona is irresponsible and over-simple.
2 ) 'conservative' is over-generalized to the point of uselessness and ambiguity.
it's a concept (dog whistle) that is used strictly for generating rage and calling other individuals to arms so that the crowd picks up torches and pitchforks and follows your lede in attacking an individual's opinion with as little prompting or individual thought as possible.
the classification and announcement of a 'dog whistle' makes civil conversation near impossible afterwards, even if those who announce it are dead-wrong or working in poor faith against an individual.
It is not used strictly for that, indeed would be ineffective for that purpose were it not also a useful word. It means "warning, this seemingly innocent reference/argument/line of argument has historically been used by people with questionable motives, and warrants extra scrutiny".
A comparison of COVID risk in vaccinated people showing that vaccination apparently reduces the risk to less than that of the average seasonal flu is the opposite of what the usually dog whistling people are trying to convey.
Earlier in the summer, we lifted mask mandates “because the vaccines were preventing disease”, and regardless of the technical facts behind that decision, the perception was reality for the general public. Now they are trying to walk that back to “vaccines prevent serious disease” in the face of delta breakthroughs but the baseline had already been set.
Not to mention the fact that experts continue to pedantically stick to their definition of serious disease as “needed oxygen in the hospital”, once again out of touch with the layperson’s opinion that a week of debilitating sickness at home followed by a month of weakness until full recovery seems pretty “serious” and something people do not want. Boosters are appealing because laypeople don’t want any serious-by-their-definition disease and experts seemingly are incapable of acknowledging or understanding that, let alone their part in creating confusing messaging (partly to appease a 3rd set of people who ironically don’t really want to hear from them at all).
Public health officials need to understand that their primary job is managing public perception of a situation first and foremost. They can go push their glasses up and pedantically spout off technical corrections behind closed doors as much as they want, but in public they have to connect and empathize with normal humans.
Part of this probably comes from medicine’s continued promulgation of their air of expertise (read: superiority) that they’ve affected for a long while, but things like compassion and bedside-manner at lower importance. I worked in medicine and studied public health, and this status-over-all-else attitude was one of the reasons I left.
Present truth and facts backing policy: Not managing public perception correctly.
Tell public what needs to be done but omit details: Conserve N95's with "masks don't work" all over again.
So what should they have said in the beginning? If they don't give technical reasons, they will be accused of talking down from their ivory tower, dictating policy with a 'just trust us' attitude, or of being biased/political.
But if they give technical reasons, people will nitpick those, especially if the data is incomplete or evolving.
There were lots of people being correct and nuanced, but they were drowned out (partly for political reasons I suspect).
Probably something like “Masks aren’t proven to help yet, but unless covid is unlike any other respiratory disease they probably won’t hurt.” Yes, this could’ve caused a rush on them (though maybe that would’ve alleviated some of the need in hospitals?) and we would’ve had to deal with that, but lying to people in the name “for their own good” is not empathizing with them.
Getting too deep into technical reasons in the middle of such an event is not understanding the definition of teachable moment. Most people aren’t open to learning deep knowledge when their fear or other emotions are up, but it can take real skill to avoid diving into details as an expert. And I have some sympathy for people getting metaphorical microphones shoved in their face, but that just goes back to my point about public health (and medical people in general) needing to know that their job is as much soft skill as hard.
the simpler reframing is to tell people the truth, and do it so it's not overwhelming to folks ("having empathy") who have many competing attention-grabbing issues in their lives (i.e., they're busy, not stupid).
and regarding masks, the simple truth is, they don't help in most common situations (i.e., out in public, where distancing does all the work), and it's extremely hard to get folks to use them in the one common situation where they can be effective: social/family gatherings. masks were never going to be an effective mitigation for this one reason alone, but because of their visible, performative value, became immediately politicized.
Actually, public health officials need to maintain the trust of the public, or no one will listen.
And you won't be trusted if everything coming out of your mouth is a lie, no matter what your intentions.
Your position of "you won't be trusted if everything coming out of your mouth is a lie" is fully compatible with this framework.
Considering the other person's mental model and incorporating their terminology when communicating with them, even when they're a bit wrong, isn't "lying" - it's basic empathy.
What specifically has been atrocious? The FDA has ALWAYS been extremely cautious in approving vaccinations for children. The vaccine was just officially approved for adults, they don't feel they have the data to do so for kids yet as far as I can tell.
Then there's the objections (and resignations) to the booster. The specific reasons being:
> current vaccine supplies could save more lives if used in previously unvaccinated populations than if used as boosters in vaccinated populations
We all know this, but it's not the FDA's job to factor in global supply and distribution. Are boosters safe and effective? That's the FDA's job. Will denying boosters in the US increase first shots in other countries? That sure seems debatable to me. But regardless, it's not the concern of the FDA. I don't know what the hell they have been doing, but they've been going far beyond their scope lately.
The FDA initially wanted 2 months of data for under 12, just like adults. Then they changed their minds and wanted 6 months instead. I'm sure they had a reason, but in 70 years of vaccines, we've never had a side effect after 2 months. If they changed their minds once, they can damn well do it again and get this thing out there.
If child mortality and clinically significant infection are low, then would it not potentially take longer to see a statistically difference in a difference between vaccine and placebo subjects?
I don’t know if they want proof of effectiveness again, or are specifically looking at risk (which would not be impacted by the above).
If guess the risk of death is so low among children, you need far more data to exclude a risk from vaccination at that (small) magnitude. Think of helmets, and how they are exactly as comfortable to wear in a car as they are on a motorcycle.
Have we ever had mRNA vaccines?
No we definitely do not want that. There are large deaths of the country where vaccinated people are dying of unrelated conditions simply because hospitals are too full of dying unvaccinated COVID patients. The only way this works is if hospitals deny admittance to unvaccinated patients entirely, to reserve capacity for all the normal reasons that people need hospitals. No one is seriously suggesting this level of care rationing though.
https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2021/09/absolutely-he...
In another rural region (Idaho, maybe?) there was just that, someone who had some treatable condition who was unable to be seen for all the unvaccinated COVID patients, and who died from the condition. I couldn't find the article, but it was just published on some authoritative news service a few days ago, in case you'd like to look for it.
Why are hospitals “full” when they had all this time? Why is society supposed to be punished for a failure of leadership to do what they said?
Saying “no it cannot be done” is just not a valid excuse.
So take the most vulnerable age group (old people) - and stick them on the front lines, looking after fat lazy middle aged people who are too lazy to get a 50cc jab.
They are retired doctors, they are not retards.
Working on the most cost-effective, life-saving way to manage the pandemic: encouraging everyone who is able to to get vaccinated. Unfortunately, they had to work against an absurd scenario where an equal-opportunity virus has been politicized.
But I think experts are allowed and expected to say “no it cannot be done” when something truly cannot be done. Experts are not superheroes and unlike superhero movies (just as example) there are matters that we cannot solve in a timely matter no matter how many experts we throw in the ring.
There is a finite healthcare capacity (largely based on the number of doctors and nurses). Once it's exceeded, people start dying who otherwise could've been saved had the full amount of healthcare resources been available.
i've heard stories like what you're talking about. they don't make much sense. hospitals running out of oxygen? get more oxygen. that's why we have roads and trucks. not enough beds in the icu? build more. i think often about the start of the pandemic, before it got over here. i saw a story on the news that china had put up several hospitals practically overnight to handle the influx of patients. but here there's nothing but lame excuses. when i hear that kind of stuff it feels like i'm talking to someone that owes me money but doesn't have it.
1. Where do you get the extra oxygen? There are places asking residents to reduce water usage because they are running out of liquid oxygen (used for water treatment in those places) do to medical uses. Do we have an enough manufacturing capabilities to produce enough oxygen to satisfy demand? Can this easily be increased?
2. "Beds" is not accurate. Often hospitals at 100%+ capacity still have physical space (i.e. "beds"), but who staffs the beds? You need doctors, nurses, and custodial staff. Where do those come from? Traveling nurses are a thing and places like Florida and Texas are hiring hundreds (thousands?). What is they supply of these nurses? What about doctors?
3. Where do the dead go and how do you deal with it? At the beginning of the pandemic NYC has to use refrigerated trucks. Now Texas and Florida (and presumably other out of control places) are also using refrigerated trucks to store the dead. This is probably one of the easier logistical issues because presumably we could just freeze the thousands of dead people every day until morgues and other resources could catch up.
I don't think this is so simple as "get more oxygen" and "add beds".
Poor? Just get more money! If only every problem had such a facile answer!
None of this is remotely as easy as you seem to think it is. If it were that easy, they'd already be doing it. They're not morons. And as someone else pointed out, "not enough beds" is shorthand for "not enough doctors and nurses". It'll take years to increase the supply there.
What is the acceptable range? Older people are still dying from Covid even after 2 shots. If a third shot can improve someone's protection from death due to Covid, say from 70% to 90% [1], that sounds like a good reason to take that shot.
The comparison between someone in Israel taking a booster shot and someone in a 3rd world country without access to vaccines is irrelevant - at least until there's a serious global initiative to provide vaccines to everyone around the world.
[1] Original stats talked about 90% protection, but that has gone down since then. One of the possible reasons is the need for a booster shot. But we still don't know what level of protection the booster shot will provide.
I am getting very wary of the whole situation.
"As soon as we get a vaccine we are good". Now we have the bloody thing, I got injected with it hoping to get back to normal: "We need a booster shot"
I was always pretty rational about it, but this is becoming a farce
some people need a villain to justify the evil in the world
I'm not sure exactly what we should do. We can't just refuse to treat the unvaccinated (I half suggested this before, which I regret), but we need to maintain our ability to care for other people. I didn't make a conscious decision that landed me in the hospital. My roommate didn't decide to let a spider bite his foot. The stage 4 cancer patient whose "elective" surgery was postponed didn't decide to get cancer. The heart patient who can't get an ICU bed didn't decide to have a heart attack.
I could imagine having regional FEMA/national guard run COVID hospitals. But where would the staff come from? There are a limited supply of trained medical staff.
I'm just not sure what we can do that's humane and fair to everyone besides just provide incentives to get vaccinated. We probably need WWII level propaganda to convince the unvaccinated.
https://news.yahoo.com/57-percent-vaccinated-covid-19-203448...
Was in Jackson Hole for Labor Day weekend. They border Idaho, whose voluntarily unvaccinated have filled its hospitals. In four days I met as many nurses and one doctor who quit out of frustration. They could no longer empathise with their patients, each describing a visceral anger at tending to ICUs of COVID patients, all unvaccinated.
I went to no less than 20 doctors or nurses in the space of 2 weeks
Not one doctor mentioned anything about quitting or being short-staffed.
This likely comes down to self selection. You were in Idaho, I in Jackson. Also, relatively-rural Driggs versus denser Boise having different rates of spare hospital capacity as well as vaccination. (Or seeing a doctor at their office versus off duty.) Given Idaho was flirting with crisis standards of care, I think it’s objective to say they have a problem.
But not ill. Thanks for your concern.
One of the doctors was an ophthalmologist. Did the full vision test while at it. I was not driving - mostly doing uber to get around.
Made the mistake accepting the eye drops they often do for vision testing.
My phone was a complete blur after the drops.
Yes...I had a few more appts that day.
Trying to get around or even something as basic as calling was hard. Now imagine having to fill out online forms on mobile. Nightmare
In quiet desperation, i tried to turn on the accessibility settings on my android.
The phone suddenly started parroting loudly YOU ARE NOW USING ACCESSIBILITY SETTINGS PLEASE CONFIRM in the middle of a quiet waiting room.
The 3 hours that followed where the most vulnerable and humbling of my life.
Percentage of 65+ people in Wyoming with at least one covid vaccine dose: 89.2%.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-trac...
There's not much they can do for a patient once that patient is admitted to the ICU.
Hospitals should have been setting up Covid wards, or tents. The hospital had enough time. Other than intubation there's not much. I guess if you are important enough you get those coveted antibodies that were donated, or blood thinning drugs if you have blood clots in your lungs.
I've never met a doctor who quit over ethics. I've seen many who quit over ego disutes, or pay.
In medicine there's something called Professional Deniability. American doctors gave it in spades.
I'm all for getting the idiots vaccinated, but don't buy the caring doctor quitting because he/she has a moral dilemma.
(I think American doctors are good, but caring no. Ethical just enough to keep them out of a Malpractise suit.)
They have, at least where I am. As demand goes up, they've even shut down whole clinics to reserve them for COVID patients.
> The hospital had enough time.
They definitely did not have enough time to train and hire new nurses and doctors.
They are not quitting out of ethics, ego or pay. They are quitting because they are overworked (more patients per doctor), and putting their own lives at risk because people made a choice not to get vaccinated.
didn't this happen basically everywhere already, and most if not all of ended up being unneeded at the time? our local civic center converted into a temporary emergency covid care facility months ago and it was never used, so they shut it down. now the local healthcare corporation CEO is claiming the ICUs are full again. well if that's truly the case, we could easily set up the emergency care facility again, our mayor and governor have shown they're more than willing to help when the situation arises. so, at least here in my neck of the woods, something doesn't add up.
Did you ask them if they treat obese people the same way?
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-...
While we're at it since you seem to be really into some weird sort of eugenics mindset why don't you let us all know whether drug addicts should get treated? You might wanna tread carefully on this authoritarian attitude you've got going. You're treading a very fine line deciding who's worthy of treatment and who's not.
I do not want a medical system that gets to pass judgement on who they're going to administer treatment to. That's absolutely horrifying. These nurses can vent all they want but the moment they suggest they're not going to do everything they can to save people they should be relieved of their jobs.
I’m morbidly curious what leads you to say that.
But wait are you saying people should be able to make their on decisions? Obesity effects only a single person. Nope obesity is transmissible. I've seen too many couples where 1 is skinny and the other is obese or overweight. They both become overweight.
Pandemics come and go. We might as well use fear to pass policies now like we did after 9/11
Friend’s mother visiting from Jamaica. People in her country are dying while they wait for first shots. The voluntarily unvaccinated in America are idiots. The author’s point is there are billions of unvoluntarily unvaccinated around the world to whom these doses could go.
Yes. You do. Even if you're asymptomatic, the virus will still mutate with a small chance of becoming another variant, and if you're unvaccinated in such a case, that means you'll spread it to others.
By not being vaccinated, you run the risk of spreading a variant around that is a "breakthrough variant" - a mutation of the disease that is hardened against a particular vaccine brand.
Thus, you will be contributing to healthy people getting sick despite being properly vaccinated.
We're also having the same discussions about third dose... Currently, the order is to give a third dose for the elderly (70+) and immunocompromised.
In the U.S. at least, there is a mass testing regime that many must submit to for work, school, etc. Are you suggesting those who have tested positive in these situations are "making up stories"?
At least we can agree on that. You're doing it right now.
Funny that you put "a few symptoms" in scare quotes, given that loss of taste and smell is highly indicative of covid and not any other widely circulating illness.
The comment I was responding to claimed "most" people are making claims without proof. Despite the hundreds of millions (billions?) of covid tests that have been administered throughout the pandemic in the U.S.
Reason has left the building.
Notice how easy it is to conveniently jettison the science + data and just demand that people "tow the line or else.."
Their choice is this, if they are otherwise healthy and young: With protection as good or better than the vaccinated, should I get a shot that might lower my already minuscule chance of dying or serious disease by a further tiny amount.
I could see rational people coming down on both sides of that.
If it is (a), evidence shows that covid + vaccine is better than either alone and hence no reason to refuse the vaccine.
If it is (b), there is perfect justification for calling that stancy as an idiotic stance.
So regarding option a, it’s moreso the case that there’s no legitimate reason TO bother with the vaccine if you have those antibodies already. A marginal improvement at best over what is already better than two shots of Pfizer, is not worth the long-term unknowns to me.
Source:
https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...
There is also new evidence that it may be safer for boys to just get covid rather than vaccination.
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...
Knowing this, will you still say there’s no reason to refuse it? Why would you elevate yourself into a position where you believe yourself to be an arbiter of this? The evidence is clear that the antibodies tens of millions already have from past infection are excellent. So stop coming up with false dilemmas.
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...
The overall IFR is misleading, given how age-stratified the risk is:
Since March of 2020 any kind of statement suggesting covid isn’t as bad as some make it out to be is met with fierce vitriol. The number of times I’ve been called “dangerous” for posting well sourced data that clearly shows the IFR of covid is not 1-2%…
It’s as if people believe that any good news will result in others “not taking this serious”. They must feel that everybody needs to be scared stiff of this thing all the time… the result is the average person thinks if they catch covid they have a 10% chance of dying, which for most age groups is like 1000x off[0].
It’s super evil, really. If people were better informed about the risk profiles of covid, how many would have sacrificed a year and a half of their short life? Wouldn’t that imply that forcing this “new normal” crap by scaring the daylights out of people is a tad misguided and perhaps very unethical and immoral? If the only way you can get people to comply with your draconian interventions is lying to society about the risks of covid… well that is pretty fucked up.
Worse, by the way, is peoples risk assessment for covid is so completely wrong it makes debating public policy impossible. If the average adult thinks they have a 10% of dying if they got covid, of course they will want to mask little kids at school, of course they’ll cheer vaccine passports, of course they’ll rat each other out for sitting on a park bench. If they knew kids were at almost zero risk of covid, and their age bracket had minimal risks, would they have agreed to any of that?
[0] a fascinating data set: https://covid19pulse.usc.edu/
Strangely, despite all the pearl clutching about "misinformation", this data-backed and quantifiable instance of covid misinformation never gets brought up. As a result, I now consider government / public health institution claims to be politically calculated fearmongering or propaganda until proven otherwise, and likely not worth my time to pay attention to. I'll update my opinion about them if their stance toward "correcting misinformation" starts to include misinformation like the above as well.
I'm not holding my breath.
I think the point about COVID is that if everybody just ignored it, this is absolutely what would happen, and case fatality rates could get pretty high.
Agreed. The correct term for them is "immoral". The only world in which it makes sense to forgo the vaccine is one in which your life is only one that matters. So a healthy unvaccinated person is making a perfectly rational decision, just a morally bankrupt one.
It is immoral for the same reason as refusing to help others survive at zero cost to you.
Isn't that a reason people don't want the shot? Because they're not sure of the answer to that question.
I got my 2 shots. Had to drive 1.5 hours each way both times, find someone to watch my kids and burn up 2 Saturdays that I could have spent doing something I wanted to do that wasn't getting a shot.
To claim there is zero cost is insincere at best.
For me both shots were zero cost, as for every other person I know.
The vaccine does not come with 0 cost.
It sucks to be surrounded by people who won't give a shit about senior Citizens, immunocompromised neighbors or older folks in their own families. It is indeed a lack of morality.
Do you find any irony in your decision being controlled by the government's policy?
When 9/11 happened it united the country. COVID should have done the same thing, but it has been used as a political tool instead, bringing out the worst in people. It makes me quite depressed when I think about it for too long.
If you think it "united the country" then you either have rose-tinted glasses on, or you had your opinion validated by the pro-war media and never looked elsewhere. The difference is that now the media disagrees with you.
Why do you say they disagree?
Edit: capitalization
Second edit: I didn't say the WAR united the country. You're twisting my comment.
I was wrong when I said the media disagrees with you though. Maybe the difference is that the anti-vax side has managed to organize through the internet and has gotten a lot more coverage, so they look bigger than they actually are?
I understand the point you’re trying to make, but I still disagree. I was in high school when 9/11 happened, I remember it well. There was a period of time, I will admit it was on the order of 48-96 hours, where this country was as united as I’ve ever experienced. COVID could have had that same effect, us as country(wo)men against the world. It didn’t. From the jump it was politics. I’m sure you remember Harris and Biden saying they wouldn’t get a vaccine when Trump was president. It’s political all the way down.
Of course it didn't. I don't understand why you think it ever had the chance to.
>I’m sure you remember Harris and Biden saying they wouldn’t get a vaccine when Trump was president. It’s political all the way down.
I remember their comments. I also remember the rest of the statements they made and the context around them. And neither of them said they wouldn't get a vaccine while Trump was president - they said that they wouldn't get a vaccine if Trump was the only one saying to get it, and experts like Fauci weren't.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/23/tiktok-pos...
that is another shining example of how COVID and the vaccine were used for political manipulation. Biden and Harris should have not made the vaccine about donald fucking trump.
Their stance was bullshit and you know it. In what world are global pharma companies going to develop a brand new vaccine using relatively new technology to try and stop a global pandemic, and the only fucking person to talk about them is Trump? Nobody else will say anything until Trump does? Trump would be the first and only authority on these vaccines? That's such a crock of shit.
I've felt this way too. People have made this so incredibly, incredibly divisive. I'm not sure what blend of fear and tribalism is driving this either. When you talk to some people about covid, what comes out of their mouth is almost word salad--they are so incredibly fearful and panicked that almost none of what they say makes sense. The idea that society should completely alter everything for this one specific illness (aka "new normal") is pretty absurd, yet people will stop just short of spitting on your face when you express any skepticism at all.
Societies reaction to this is all just so freaking bizarre. None of what we are doing adds up or makes much sense when you really start asking questions.
Yeah and if you got vaccinated you probably wouldn't have caught it in August. Great hill to (hopefully metaphorically) die on.
Apparently we have sympathy for people who fail to make good health choices except for the unvaccinated.
Not effective at all.
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/features/fight...
If you run into a bar shouting about the dangers of consuming alcohol while promising an injection that makes a person never want to drink again, I would consider you fairly stupid.
If such a thing were available, and people refused, and then got alcohol poisoning, then it is arguable that, on some level, their stupidity is to blame here.
First off, the vaccine does not eliminate the risk of Covid. If you went to an alcoholic and said “this shot has a 90% chance of curing you of alcoholism but had side effects and you might end up quitting anyways” would you still call them an idiot for hesitating?
Type 2 diabetics can prevent most of the complications if they adhere to a strict diet and medication regimen. When they end up getting a limb amputated do you call them idiots as well?
Depends on the side effects obviously. If clinical trials revealed nothing but rare allergic reactions to shots themselves and priors based on established medical knowledge predicted a very low chance of anything unusual happening over the very very long term, it'd be a no brainer. Nobody just quits alcoholism. It's by definition a difficult process.
> Type 2 diabetics can prevent most of the complications if they adhere to a strict diet and medication regimen. When they end up getting a limb amputated do you call them idiots as well?
I would call them idiots if they were presented a single shot to cure them of type 2 diabetes and they decided not to, then lost their limbs.
Requires lifestyle change
> alcoholics
Requires lifestyle change
> people who don’t take their medication
Requires lifestyle change
> Vaccine
Requires a choice and a half day off.
There is a BIG difference there.
Obesity causes massive costs and burden on our healthcare system yet I don’t see people calling them idiots.
And yes, all the issues listed are ones that can (usually) be corrected by action of the person involved. But the _level_ of action is on a totally different scale.
Given this guy's attitudes towards vaccines, I doubt it's intentional.
Well I'd suggest not downplaying it that way. Going from a junk-food-and-soda diet to a healthy one is a huge shift in lifestyle. You don't just make a decision one day and that's that. You have to make that decision several times a day, every day, for the rest of your life.
Not getting enough exercise? You don't just sign up for a gym membership and consider it done. No, that's just the first step. Now you need to show up at the gym several times a week, and put the work in over and over again.
An alcoholic doesn't just decide to stop drinking one day, then poof they're cured. That decision is just the beginning. What follows is some mix of white knuckling in the beginning and an ever-present vigilance to maintain sobriety. It's not just "I don't drink anymore", but also "I need to come to terms with this issue or that relationship", and "I can't hang out at the bar every night anymore". It's a long-term project, not just a decision.
Getting a vaccination is not like that at all. It really is a single decision, once made, and never thought about again.
I mean, we should. And I say that as someone who is overweight and drinks more than I should. (Hm. Are they connected?!)
I'm fully aware that one of the most significant changes I can make to reduce my risk profile for all cause mortality is dropping weight, and have at times done so, and at times slipped back into poor eating and exercise habits. I'm in the middle one of the trends to improve it, but who knows if it will stick this time.
And yep, I'm stupid for not sticking to it. Or lacking in willpower. Or some combination of things that you would be fully justified in ascribing some sort of negative label to.
But if I could take a shot that makes me significantly less likely to die from my love of craft beer and cooking delicious, delicious, high calorie meals full of carbs and fat and not enough veggies, I sure would. If I could take a shot that made my body recover from doing strength training now in my 30s like it did back when I was in my early 20s, and less likely to have minor injuries, or even more likely to get me to return to the habit after recuperating from those injuries instead of staring wistfully at my garage door and thinking "man I really should get back to lifting weights", I would definitely do that.
I know I'm an idiot for not taking enough control over my own life to take care of some of the single largest health concerns. But I'd be an even bigger idiot if there was something as simple as a two or three dose vaccine regimen available to take care of those risks that I ignored.
Maybe some people won’t get the vaccine because they already had Covid. Israeli study showed that people who had Covid are more protected than the vaccinated.
And that’s besides the point as the recovered may as well be vaccinated in the context of this discussion.
If you've already had COVID, especially recently, that's a pretty damn good reason to not get vaccinated given that your immunity is likely far stronger and more durable than a vaccinated-but-COVID-naïve person. [1]
While getting vaccinated on top might help (there is not definitive data on this yet AFAIK [2]), it is also not 100% risk-free. So why would you do that if you're already more immune and thus less of a risk / less at-risk than the vaccinated population?
For some people it might make sense to still get vaccinated after COVID recovery. But for those who choose not to, it's not at all fair to say they are all "idiots" or that there is "no reason" not to still get the shot. That's not accurate based on what the actual science tells us at this time.
[1]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021. The increased risk was significant (P<0.001) for symptomatic disease as well. When allowing the infection to occur at any time before vaccination (from March 2020 to February 2021), evidence of waning natural immunity was demonstrated, though SARS-CoV-2 naïve vaccinees had a 5.96-fold (95% CI, 4.85 to 7.33) increased risk for breakthrough infection and a 7.13-fold (95% CI, 5.51 to 9.21) increased risk for symptomatic disease. SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees were also at a greater risk for COVID-19-related-hospitalizations compared to those that were previously infected.
[2]: https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/why-covid-19-vacci...
None of these studies suggest that getting a vaccine increases your risk. It can only decrease it.
You could start with “a person with a skewed risk assessment.” I’ve found avoiding pejorative is a more effective persuasion technique. Maybe the people around you really respond to name calling?
I understand that there have been very few deaths or serious injuries from the vaccines. At the same time, I am aware of the unexplained menstrual side effects. I completely understand why women who plan to have children, and parents of girls, don't view the vaccine as zero risk.
1: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/08/09/1024190...
I'm not at risk for COVID so it doesn't make sense to take on additional unknown risk in this case.
I also believe people should be able to make their own decisions, and believe I'm doing my part in exercising that right and sticking it to the man (which is more like a hive mind today really).
There are no long term studies so calling it incredibly safe is misleading at best. What happens if some issues start cropping up in 5 or 10 years.
>Research has not yet shown how long you are protected from getting COVID-19 again after you recover from COVID-19.
So it could be longer than vaccines? Some places are already pushing for boosters since vaccine efficacy is waning. It seems like we should look into this.
Do you think this is a thing we do in general before starting to produce and distribute vaccines? If you are under that impression, I must inform you, it is not the case. We do not spend a decade watching for vaccine side effects before we begin vaccinating people, even when the situation is "normal" and not the same as COVID.
Lets say you are a person who has had substandard health care all your life. And justly see the medical system as something not catered for people like you. You know the history of inhumane medical experiments being conducted on your ancestors as early as a generation ago. You also know that the medical profession has had severely wrong and racist theories about health care for your ethnicity.
Now the medical profession asks you to trust them and accept the vaccine.
Now I am not that person, and where I’m from the health care system has proven it self to be extremely valuable for me personally and those who I love (and coincidentally has one of the highest vaccination rate in the world). But if I put my self in other’s shoes I can easily understand how vaccine hesitancy is only natural.
Now what to do about it: Respect peoples concerns, e.g. don’t call them idiots for these concerns. Try to understand and educate. If people still don’t want the vaccine, don’t panic. Keep giving vaccines out for free to those who want it (and please include poorer countries). Perhaps if enough people are vaccinated worldwide it will slow the spread and mutation rate of the virus enough that we won’t have more of the mass waves of new variants and the vaccination status of each individual becomes irrelevant.
Including erectile dysfunction.
If you can't breath stuff in your body breaks. Water is wet. More news at 11.
COVID doesn't need to be worse than other respiratory diseases to be a problem if the baseline level of long term damage is bad.
All of them still work by teaching your own immune system.
The mechanisms are the payloads. They're different formats of the spike protein recipe.
Though, based on the actual data we have, his numbers aren't bad for cases, and would need to be shifted to a dice with a lot more sides than a d20 for hospitalizations and deaths.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90675524/delta-variant-vaccinate...
If big pharma can get billions of people signed up for regular booster shots and new vaccines, they will become enormously powerful.
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si....
"The 21% lower incidence in schools that required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional."
It’s to reduce strain on hospitals and healthcare in general, but ICU beds in particular. It’s one thing for someone to get severe covid when the healthcare system knows how to treat it and has the capacity. It’s another thing to get severe covid (or have a heart attack, or be in an auto accident) when hospitals are at full capacity. The goal of the US government has always been to flatten the curve and never to eradicate the disease.
That's a very American-centric view. I'm not aware of any regulatory bodies (WHO included) which allow vaccination for kids under 12.
Also overall their health/body works different than adults thus lot of medication available for adults cannot be used for kids as it is dangerous.
Thus what is beneficial for adults might not be for children.
Unfortunately, yes. The unvaccinated are a fertile ground for strains to develop. Protecting the unvaccinated is in your own best interest. We're going to need new vaccines when the the virus evolves in the unvaccinated, but the vaccinated can delay that eventuality.
People with a vaccine that doesn’t stop infection may have a higher chance and time to help develop mutations in order for it to survive.
It was extremely dangerous to push an imperfect vaccine, and because we know the current ones do not stop infection, transmission, or lower the viral load, that might be what has happened. IDK, not an epidemiologist.
https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-cent...
Not to mention, the original version of the virus is gone, it has been outcompeted by the variants. The booster should be updated to work against the latest dominant variants. Think of it as a software update.
No, that is not true. Also, for note, there are ZERO tests for variants so you know. It must be genetically sequenced. All the data we have is from sampling. Last report I saw put delta at 20% of Covid cases in the UK based on sampling sewage water which seems like it could have a high margin of error. But I’m open minded if you have a different source.
If you have a vaccine, then your risk of death is far below that of the flu (statistically).
If you don't have a vaccine by now, you want covid instead and this booster conversation is irrelevant.
Kids are banned from taking anything.
So I expect booster or no booster, frankly it just won't matter much at the population scale.
I also don't understand the mask/booster thing now.
Is it to protect kids? If so, then all that effort is better directed at the FDA who has banned them from getting the vaccine. I think this is the area where people should have the most anger and Biden should frankly push legislation to replace or reform the FDA. Their behavior has been atrocious.
Is it to protect the unvaccinated? COVID is not going away, so IMO here we just want everyone in this population to get the disease as fast as possible to get it over with. Spreading is basically "good" for this group.
Is it to protect the vaccinated? This makes no sense, as the risk to the vaccinated well below the range we have accepted for decades.