This description suggests that vaccination status is the most significant risk factor for dying of covid. That is factually wrong. Moreover, it's politics, it's an attempt to convince people to get vaccinated.
Age and health are more significant factors than vaccination status. Therefore it would be more accurate to describe covid as "an illness which largely inconveniences the young and healthy and jeopardizes the lives of those who are not".
Source: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/covid-19-vaccine-sta...
Someone needs to learn statistics there. The 25% number is useless without knowing what rate of the general population is vaccinated. If 100% are vaccinated, all deaths would be vaccinated too. If, say, 50% of the population are vaccinated, but only 25% of covid deaths are vaccinated people, the vaccine is in fact quite effective in reducing death in hospitalized covid cases[¹] — by a factor of 3.
[¹] assuming they would mirror the vaccination rate, which they don't.
No one in this thread, including me and the article I linked, is arguing otherwise.
These still make up a substantial proportion of hospitalizations, because Covid is 2–3 orders of magnitude more likely to lead to serious symptoms for this age category, so that vaccinated elderly people have comparable risk to unvaccinated people 30–40 years younger.
If you tally up more age categories, about 92% of people over the age of 35 have been fully vaccinated.
Or flipped around, 80% of unvaccinated people in that county are under the age of 35, 15% are age 35–50, 5% are age 50–65, and essentially none are older than that.
It is amazing that even so, 83% of hospitalizations and 75% of deaths were among the unvaccinated. These vaccines are astonishingly effective!
In UK, for age group >60yo, with similarly high vaccination rates, the percent of vaccinated hospitalizations for this age group is 82.5%.
These numbers inhabit different realities. I cannot think of any reasonable explanation. Some attempts:
* King County is failing to vaccinate the highest risk subpopulation within this age group.
* King County is hospitalizing comparatively vast numbers of unvaccinated elder covid patients.
* King County, UK, or both, is having serious data collection and/or reporting problems.
* UK is using a different vaccine
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/public.health.seattle...
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Edit. Peeking at the Singapore dashboards, they are much closer to the King County picture than the UK picture.
...
> Age and health are more significant factors than vaccination status.
You can't easily change your age or health to reduce your risk. You can change your vaccination status. Thus for any given individual vaccination is the most significant action that can be easily taken to significantly reduce their chance of dying of COVID.
It's still useful information. An elderly person, informed of his elevated risk, may make different choices than if he thought "well I'm vaccinated so I'm safe".
Anyway, your post is proving my point. The goal in describing covid as "dangerous to the lives of unvaccinated; inconvenient for the vaccinated" is to convince people to get vaccinated, not to describe reality.
There's a factual case for vaccination, and many have made it. But others are being dishonest and manipulative. There's a price to be paid for that and it may end up being more expensive than the benefits accrued.
Strictly speaking, my age changes constantly without me even thinking about it :P
Here are the latest survival rates by age:
0-19: 99.9973%
20-29: 99.986%
30-39: 99.969%
40-49: 99.918%
50-59: 99.73%
60-69: 99.41%
70+: 97.6% (non institutionalized, not in a care home)
70+: 94.5% (all)
Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.08.21260210v...
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
And why is everyone over 50 running out to get the shingles vaccine? It's not like shingles kill you.
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
But in cases when that's happened, how many people caught "breakthrough" measles, as opposed to unvaccinated people catching measles?
> This is often done at age 15 to 18 months. After one dose at the age of nine months 85% are immune, while a dose at twelve months results in 95% immunity.
This graphic is interesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles_vaccine#/media/File:Me... With one dose the case number is reduced a lot, but there are still some smaller peaks aver few years. After the second dose was made mandatory, the number of cases goes to almost zero.
I'm not sure about Canada, but here in Argentina kids get two doses, and every 5-10 years there is a effort to give an additional dose to some groups with more risk (like small children).
https://i1.wp.com/vaxopedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/a...
Covid has killed upwards of 770k people in the US.
If measles were a brand-new disease introduced today, it would also be a bloodbath.
Our public health systems responds to reality, not theoretical casualties in populations that do not exist.
If measles was killing 1 million people per year we would've absolutely locked down much harder to stop the spread. That is just common sense.
It never was doing that. It was killing like 10k people or less per year. So any kind of comparison of our response to covid is ridiculous, except in acknowledging that even though measles was far less dangerous to our population, we still have mandated vaccination against it.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
It seems like good news for people worried about long Covid.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
Do you have a good source from that? Preferably an article in a serious newspaper that verified the sources. I really expect people to be asking for a painkiller and a miracle cure.
Does it prevent infection and transmission?
There is currently no substantive data available related to impact of Pfizer BioNTech vaccine on transmission or viral shedding.
[0] Who Had Covid-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Cases? https://nyti.ms/3nFvITV
In the UK where the health authorities break down by age and vaxx status with what seems to be reasonably accurate reporting, the vaccinated per capita rate is ~2x the unvaccinated rate and nobody knows why.
I'm not sure how that contradicts the parent post? You could be protected from hospitalization/symptoms, but still be transmitting it.
Two years of lockdowns, reckless spending, mandatory vaccinations, extreme media gaslighting. Soon there will be real consequences to these simplistic and heavy-handed authoritarian measures, and they're going to be of much greater significance than covid itself. And when they do come to pass the midwits will cry, "We couldn't have known!"
I think many people don't realize the levels of resentment growing in the other half of the country. The Marine Corps is about to boot ~10,000 active service members for not getting the shot. [1] The other branches have only slightly better numbers, with the Guard and Reserves far worse. The Oklahoma National Guard has refused to enforce the mandate and is currently in a stand-off with the DoD. [2] This is not a recipe for long term stability.
[1]. https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2021...
[2]. https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2021/11/12/oklahoma...
Indeed. The "something" is said authorities having repeatedly been caught lying.
I agree we should be realistic and truthful about consequences for our decisions, but I do not think stigma will help improve the situation. It is more likely to lead to resentment, and polarisation.
You sound as if you live in a weird parallel universe where we don't stigmatise those people.
It's not difficult to find people who think along all or some of these lines: Obese people are ugly gluttons, drinkers are a danger to others and themselves and have no self control, extreme sports athletes are crazy, people who have children in their forties are inconsiderate and will get retard babies.
The reason we don't get worked up about those as much as about covidiots, is that the groups you mention don't endanger anyone else. The one exception is extreme sports (think drag racing, not wingsuit flying), and that's why we require those athletes to buy insurance.
Looking forward to statistics supporting your assertion.
It's pretty simple: we stigmatize people whose choices place undue burden on others' ability to live safely.
Driving drunk?
Driving 90/55 on a crowded road?
Indiscriminately discharging a firearm into the air?
Exposing people to typhi salmonella after being established as a carrier?
Exposing people to HIV (and other STDs) knowingly?
Choosing to be unvaccinated against covid?
We seem to have a pretty consistent pattern here, and considering that remaining unvaccinated increases spread and increases everyone's risk of death (especially those who can't receive the vaccine), stigmatization of those who choose not to vaccinate without sound medical grounds fits this easy binary filter.
So unvaccinated cause harm to others indirectly by burding the healthcare system. And one also does that by socially acceptable stuff like motorcycling (or maybe that's a plus if one is organ donor?).
> The viral load declined more rapidly for those who were fully vaccinated than those who were unvaccinated. However, investigators noted that vaccinated individuals did not have a lower peak viral load than those who were vaccinated.
Tldr: there's probably a window where vaccinated people can transmit the virus as effectively as unvaccinated people, but that window is almost certainly shorter.
While that's probably not helpful in household settings, it's still plenty useful in cutting disease spread during short terms in confined spaces.
But doesn't California's SB 239 mean that a lot of people don't believe this anymore? And don't most people who think SB 239 was a good thing also hate people who don't want the vaccine?
From my reading, Cali HSC 120290 criminalizes knowingly transmitting any STD, which fits the bill for stigmatization. I'm guessing your point is it seems like transmitting any STD is a misdemeanor now, whereas in the past, only HIV would be tagged — with a felony, specifically. Right?
I'd venture that it's an adjustment with the times, specifically that HIV is no longer a death sentence especially as drugs for HIV come upon patent expiration in ~6 years time.
Still a stigma, and it still impairs a person's ability to have a normal romantic life, but it's no longer murder-adjacent.
I mean seriously, is there anyone out there who prefers getting an STD (let alone a very serious one) then getting punched in the face for example or getting your home broken into?
Your points were addressed implicitly, but I can do so explicitly at your behest:
Obesity and alcoholism aren't preventing people with other conditions from seeking medical care because the current medical system (at least in western nations) can account for and manage these conditions successfully, unlike COVID which has consistently resulted in resource, capacity, and utility shortages throughout the pandemic thereby posing an undue risk to general welfare and the lives of others.
I also say this as someone who's been both obese and not obese: unlike a decision to refuse a life-saving vaccine, refusing to eat is far, far harder. And as someone who refuses to drink specifically because I know my own tendencies towards addiction, I empathize with those who started drinking socially and suddenly found themselves trapped by the vice grip of an alcohol abuse disorder.
None of these compare to to choosing to refuse a vaccine without sound medical grounds.
There's nothing much to debate here; the topics you flagged are pretty personal topics for me, so I'll gladly and passionately defend against their misuse in debate.
And I think I agree with you, that the essential difference is how easy it is to get vaccinated.
I probably come to different conclusions because I know people for whom it's not "easy". This is because they are fearful of vaccines, mistrust authority, are uneducated or are paranoid. I think there is a parallel between an alcoholic slowly ruining their life through denial of the effects of drinking, and someone refusing a useful vaccine due to fear. In both cases, stigma may help them change course, but in my experience is is more likely to entrench the behaviour. Thus I don't think it should be used.
At some point people need to stop being so lenient on health suppliers. They are implicitly demanding society trashes itself to avoid them having to hire and train. It's endemic now, there is no cure, the treatment is mostly still oxygen+drugs. There's no excuse.
https://www.wfae.org/health/2021-09-30/novant-says-9-of-10-c...
How do unvaccinated people who work from home put other workers at risk?
So being unvaccinated is risky to others around you while having a high BMI is not, and you suggested firing employees with a high BMI, while the mandate only calls for testing unvaccinated employees.
So again, the analogy falls apart two different ways.
It's kind of like trying to compare O(n) to O(2^n) without admitting that [the system was operating fine in the O(n) regime and is falling apart in the O(2^n) regime]. My sister-in-law is a nurse practitioner and she has been reposting job listings for RNs and NPs over the past year or so offering $6k+ per week (!!!) for RNs and NPs to do stints in hospital systems under extreme load around the country.
Prior to the pandemic (and also today during the pandemic), there wasn't a concern about people dying from treatable medical conditions because healthcare capacity was taken up by those suffering from obesity.
I didn't try and avoid anything, I actually don't know how racism or anti-semitism has anything to do with this?
I agree on your point that there is some stigma for most damaging behaviours but the Covid vax stigma is much more severe where I live. People who make the "wrong" choice are being treated as second-class citizens, with rights being removed as a punishment for their sins. This is not a healthy way to gain compliance.
Sorry dude the emperor is naked, and no one is buying this line anymore.
Worried about unvaccinated people filling up hospitals? Why then are we firing health care workers who have had covid and recovered but aren’t vaccinated?
No, this is about control, the tactics are far more defensible and less heinous then we’ve seen with other nation states in the past, but that is because it is all that is needed to convince people like you that it is good to stigmatize people who following their own conscious or medical reasons don’t get vaccinated.
Well actually, it largely inconveniences the unvaccinated /and/ the vaccinated. The difference in severity comes with age. Older people and babies are far more susceptible to the virus than are children and adults.
The amount of people who truly can't vaccinate is probably small enough that someone who is exercising their right to choose is probably not going to take beds from those who could not get the vaccine.
Or on the flip side, we can keep describing it as what it is, i.e an illness which largely inconveniences the vaccinated and jeopardizes the lives of those who are not.
This really seems like it's just an opinion piece. The vaccine cuts the window of contagion, spares capacity in hospitals for the immunocompromised as well as for people suffering other ailments beyond covid, and enables a resumption of normality necessary for mental health.
People who choose not to vaccinate for reasons other than contraindications or other medical exclusions such as allergies to vaccine components are really just choosing to play Russian roulette with a 50 chamber revolver — and risking the lives of those who can't vaccinate by projecting the virus for longer durations of time and occupying ventilators, ECMOs, hospital beds, and pricey monoclonal antibodies.