covid-19

[Westerly 61]

98% of those currently in the hospital with COVID are unvaccinated. So in essence we’re required to wear a mask to protect people who don’t want to protect themselves. That’s like the literal definition of completely bullshit. I say thin the heard. Our fastest way to immunity is to just let them all get infected since it will happen eventually anyways and then we can truely be immune as one whole country. It’s absolute horseshit that in required to make sacerfices to help people who aren’t willing to do the same thing to help themselves. 

Edited July 9, 2021 by Westerly

[headoverheels 333]

19 minutes ago, Westerly said:

Our fastest way to immunity is to just let them all get infected since it will happen eventually anyways and then we can truely be immune as one whole country.

What about the people who have been vaccinated, but have immune system problems that make the vaccines ineffective?  What you suggest will make it more likely that they will die.

[Stumpy 284]

8 minutes ago, headoverheels said:

What about the people who have been vaccinated, but have immune system problems that make the vaccines ineffective?  What you suggest will make it more likely that they will die.

Ah yes - but its the standard - "thats not me or mine so I don't care"

[wolfriverjoe 1,523]

4 hours ago, headoverheels said:

What about the people who have been vaccinated, but have immune system problems that make the vaccines ineffective?  What you suggest will make it more likely that they will die.

What about the people who, for various reasons, cannotget vaccinated?
One of my mom's caregivers is allergic to chicken eggs (oddly enough, she can eat duck eggs, but that's how allergies go).
She cannot get vaccinated.

She's one of the people depending on 'herd immunity' to stop the spread and allow her to resume normal life.

[Stumpy 284]

32 minutes ago, wolfriverjoe said:

What about the people who, for various reasons, cannotget vaccinated?
One of my mom's caregivers is allergic to chicken eggs (oddly enough, she can eat duck eggs, but that's how allergies go).
She cannot get vaccinated.

She's one of the people depending on 'herd immunity' to stop the spread and allow her to resume normal life.

Interesting. 
Has she got another opinion on that?

Neither the Pfizer/BioNTech or the AstraZeneca or Moderna vaccine contain any egg proteins and none of the vaccines are contraindicated in egg allergy.

https://www.anaphylaxis.org.uk/covid-19-advice/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-and-allergies/#:~:text=Do the COVID-19 vaccines,are contraindicated in egg allergy.

Edited July 9, 2021 by Stumpy
missed source

[kallend 2,117]

8 minutes ago, Stumpy said:

Interesting. 
Has she got another opinion on that?

Neither the Pfizer/BioNTech or the AstraZeneca or Moderna vaccine contain any egg proteins and none of the vaccines are contraindicated in egg allergy.

https://www.anaphylaxis.org.uk/covid-19-advice/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-and-allergies/#:~:text=Do the COVID-19 vaccines,are contraindicated in egg allergy.

You and your so-called "facts"!

[yoink 321]

On 7/7/2021 at 2:22 AM, kallend said:

I have now gone 19 months without getting a common cold or any other respiratory illness.  This is the longest cold-free period that I can remember.   My wife has gone even longer.  I attribute this to mask wearing in public places and caution about contact with possibly infected surfaces.  Despite being fully vaccinated since February, we plan to continue masking up.

Yup. I didn’t have any during the lockdown, but have had 2 since restrictions lifted on June 16th.

I attribute it to a combination of having a child at preschool and having a weakened immune response to the lack of any infections over the last year - my body has gotten used to not having to fight stuff.

 

[wolfriverjoe 1,523]

7 hours ago, Stumpy said:

Interesting. 
Has she got another opinion on that?

Neither the Pfizer/BioNTech or the AstraZeneca or Moderna vaccine contain any egg proteins and none of the vaccines are contraindicated in egg allergy.

https://www.anaphylaxis.org.uk/covid-19-advice/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-and-allergies/#:~:text=Do the COVID-19 vaccines,are contraindicated in egg allergy.

No idea.

I have no allergies to anything (thankfully), so I don't pay a whole lot of attention to what sort of allergies are problematic for what stuff.
She may (or may not) have other allergies that are preventing her from getting the Covid vaccine.
Or she could just be wrong.
I'll ask.

[Westerly 61]

On 7/8/2021 at 10:59 PM, headoverheels said:

What about the people who have been vaccinated, but have immune system problems that make the vaccines ineffective?  What you suggest will make it more likely that they will die.

There is no evidence that someone with a medical condition will render the vaccine ineffective. Stop making shit up. In any case, the answer is simple. They need to take the appropriate precautions. It’s not society’s job to protect everyone else. It’s your job to protect yourself. No one cares more about your safety than you do. What we are doing is not sustainable and needs to end at some point so sooner is better than later. 
 

also I’d add that medical conditions are not new. The flu is a leading cause of death amongs the elderly. Yet where was all the ‘think about others’ prior to COVID? That’s right, no where. No one gave a fuck. Funny suddenly everyone cares about saving lives during COVID but prior to that no one gave a shit. Don’t get too comfortable on your high horse. It’s a temporary position. 

Edited July 10, 2021 by Westerly

[olofscience 490]

2 hours ago, Westerly said:

There is no evidence that someone with a medical condition will render the vaccine ineffective. Stop making shit up.

The vaccine relies on the person's immune system creating antibodies in response to the vaccine. If the immune system is impaired (like for those taking immunosuppressants - transplant patients for example) then it won't make any antibodies, thus making the vaccine ineffective. The immune system could also focus on another target protein for a virus-vector vaccine like AZ and make it ineffective against covid-19. That's why effectiveness rates are never 100%, and some vaccines are barely over 50% effective.

I thought you worked in a hospital? I'm surprised you're saying this.

[olofscience 490]

2 hours ago, Westerly said:

It’s not society’s job to protect everyone else.

Um...it kind of is. Pretty much the entire purpose of society is to confer benefits to those playing by its rules, and one of those benefits is being protected (in principle) against being killed by idiots.

2 hours ago, Westerly said:

It’s your job to protect yourself.

Also right to a certain extent, but what's the purpose of the military then? What's the purpose of the police? They cost a lot you know. Who are they protecting if not "everyone else"?

[billvon 3,089]

5 hours ago, Westerly said:

There is no evidence that someone with a medical condition will render the vaccine ineffective. Stop making shit up.

Any medical condition that suppresses immune response will make the vaccine ineffective, since vaccines count on a normal adaptive immune response to generate immunological memory.   A relative of ours recently went through chemo; her doctors had to time the vaccine so that she had a robust immune response to it, otherwise it would have been ineffective.

You keep purporting to be some sort of medical professional, but your regularly post misleading and downright wrong information.  Cut it out.  If you don't, I'm going to start editing your posts to add a disclaimer so people don't inadvertently take you seriously.

[JerryBaumchen 1,451]

Hi folks,

A college student won the $1 million Covid lottery here in Oregon:  $1 million winner of Oregon’s COVID-19 vaccination lottery is a college student - oregonlive.com

IMO could not happen to a more deserving person.

Jerry Baumchen

[billvon 3,089]

4 hours ago, olofscience said:

Um...it kind of is. Pretty much the entire purpose of society is to confer benefits to those playing by its rules, and one of those benefits is being protected (in principle) against being killed by idiots.

Yep.  In fact, the US Constitution calls out that the government has a responsibility to protect the common welfare - twice.

Preamble - "We the people of the United States . . . promote the general welfare"

Section 8 - "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States"

Hence the CDC, the FBI, the FAA, the transcontinental railroad etc etc.

[Westerly 61]

12 hours ago, billvon said:

Yep.  In fact, the US Constitution calls out that the government has a responsibility to protect the common welfare - twice.

 

Great, so why are we only getting around this some 200 years after said document was written? Where were all the bleeding hearts when the flu was around? You know how many people have died from the flu? FAR more than COVID. Buy a factor of dozens. Yet, no one has given a crap about that for the last hundred or so years. This year had the lowest prevalence of flu deaths of any year in recorded history--largely because of all the COVID precautions of course. If we would have enacted these precautions for daily life a long time ago, millions of lives would have been saved from flu deaths. But we dident. No one cared. Even in an actual hospital, during peak flu season, no one wore masks. OR staff were the only ones that wore masks 100% of the time while at work. No other unit did-not even the ICU.

I just find it convenient that all of a sudden we have a societal obligation to help people now, but it took a pandemic to figure that out. Prior to 2020 that wasent a thing and no one cared.

Edited July 11, 2021 by Westerly

[kallend 2,117]

2 hours ago, Westerly said:

Great, so why are we only getting around this some 200 years after said document was written? 

Same reason that we still have problems with the very first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, written, incidentally, by a white supremacist slave owner.

[ryoder 1,590]

A humorous bit of news I heard on NPR this morning:

Gibraltar has administered at least 78,125 doses of COVID vaccines so far. Assuming every person needs 2 doses, that’s enough to have vaccinated about 115.9% of the country’s population.

Explanation: Vaccination tourism.

Reuters COVID-19 TRACKER - Gibralter

[olofscience 490]

6 hours ago, Westerly said:

FAR more than COVID.

Over decades, sure. But how about "deaths per year"? Does flu kill 4 million people every 18 months?

[headoverheels 333]

If you want to see where the US may be heading with the delta variant, take a look at the UK, or (worse) the Netherlands.  Then number of new cases per day in the Netherlands has doubled in the past 2 days, quadrupled in 4 days, and octupled in 7 days.  Within the coming week, both the UK and the Netherlands will probably exceed their previous new daily case peaks.

[wolfriverjoe 1,523]

17 hours ago, Westerly said:

...You know how many people have died from the flu? FAR more than COVID. Buy a factor of dozens. Yet, no one has given a crap about that for the last hundred or so years....

That's funny.

A 'bad' flu year might see 50k deaths. Covid killed 10 times that. But the flu kills "FAR more".

The flu vaccine has been around for a long, long time. There are widespread media campaigns about how important it is to get it. Along with the importance of washing hands, covering coughs & sneezes, all of that.

I would think a 'health care professional' would know those things. 

Bill's right. 

[billvon 3,089]

18 hours ago, Westerly said:

Great, so why are we only getting around this some 200 years after said document was written?

?? We didn't.  Postal roads were one of the first things the new government built - for the common welfare.  In 1891 the US government started doing health inspections on immigrants - again, for the common welfare.  This has a long history.

Quote

Where were all the bleeding hearts when the flu was around? You know how many people have died from the flu? FAR more than COVID.

Nope.  In any given year, the flu kills tens of thousands.  60,000 deaths is a really bad year for flu deaths.  COVID killed 360,000 people last year. 

Quote

Yet, no one has given a crap about that for the last hundred or so years.

You are unaware that there's a flu vaccine, and that the US spends a lot of effort coming up with a new vaccine every year?  Or that "wash your hands" and "stay home when you are sick" campaigns are regular parts of the CDC's outreach efforts?

What do you do in the medical field, specifically?

Quote

I just find it convenient that all of a sudden we have a societal obligation to help people now, but it took a pandemic to figure that out. Prior to 2020 that wasent a thing and no one cared.

You've never heard of the flu vaccine?

[Baksteen 84]

On 7/11/2021 at 7:51 AM, Westerly said:

Great, so why are we only getting around this some 200 years after said document was written? Where were all the bleeding hearts when the flu was around? You know how many people have died from the flu? FAR more than COVID. Buy a factor of dozens. Yet, no one has given a crap about that for the last hundred or so years. This year had the lowest prevalence of flu deaths of any year in recorded history--largely because of all the COVID precautions of course. If we would have enacted these precautions for daily life a long time ago, millions of lives would have been saved from flu deaths. But we dident. No one cared. Even in an actual hospital, during peak flu season, no one wore masks. OR staff were the only ones that wore masks 100% of the time while at work. No other unit did-not even the ICU.

I just find it convenient that all of a sudden we have a societal obligation to help people now, but it took a pandemic to figure that out. Prior to 2020 that wasent a thing and no one cared.

Don't be a fool.

Have you seen the general willingness of Joe Sixpack to compy with masking, social distancing and similar easily followed measures, even during the height of the aforementioned pandemic?

Would you like to make such measures permanent?

[Baksteen 84]

On 7/8/2021 at 2:19 AM, Westerly said:

Even if every human in America was vaccinated, that wouldn’t change the fact that there are still some 120+ countries who have a 0% vaccination rate and the virus could very easily mutate there and then travel to the USA. Vaccinating just one country in a world of 240 countries means little to nothing in the grand scheme of stopping mutations. 

Correct, actually.

It's therefore in the rich countries best self-interest to stop hogging the vaccines and start making the vaccines available to second and third world countries.

 

The Dutch approach, filtered trough my own cynical interpretation:
Astra has been taken out of the Dutch vaccination program since the government has questions about the vaccine's reliability, what with the talk about side effects and all.

The government have also announced to donate several hundreds of thousands of doses of Astra (aka crap we do not want) to other countries. 

[Baksteen 84]

On 7/12/2021 at 12:25 AM, headoverheels said:

If you want to see where the US may be heading with the delta variant, take a look at the UK, or (worse) the Netherlands.  Then number of new cases per day in the Netherlands has doubled in the past 2 days, quadrupled in 4 days, and octupled in 7 days.  Within the coming week, both the UK and the Netherlands will probably exceed their previous new daily case peaks.

Fear not, America, your political leaders do not have the monopoly on stupidity.

The Dutch government made a bid for the top of the list in the hall of Infamy with their latest bout of mind-boggling ignorance and stupidity.

Not only had they let go some of the more unpopular covid-restrictions at breakneck speed (exactly as they did last year when the situation threatened to become stable and under control), they also naively declared that teenagers could attend night clubs and bars immediately after getting their vaccinations "as they would be fully protected".
In bars and night clubs there would be no need for social distancing as long as people could prove they were either vaccinated or had tested negative for Covid in the past 40 hours. You could prove that you were eligible with an app. Unfortunately the developers (who were on government pay) forgot to make the system watertigfht, so people could just share the QR code the app provided them by sharing screenshots via Whatsapp and suchlike. That worked, if the venue in question even bothered to check in the first place.

 

The prime minister and the minister of health and safety have made their apologies for this "lapse of judgement" in a separate press conference and have asked anyone who attended bars or night clubs past weekend to go into self-isolation and get tested.

It's depressing to see that the people in charge have not learned a thing during the entire pandemic. I guess I'll be staying in a self imposed lockdownish for now.

[SkyDekker 1,465]

On 7/10/2021 at 2:52 AM, Westerly said:

They need to take the appropriate precautions. It’s not society’s job to protect everyone else.

There is a reason it is called Public Health and not Person Health.