To Vaccinate or Not---The Rat Flu Odyssey Continues

[CascadeLuke]

Thank you to the healthcare workers in the TGR community- people like M.unicorn & bibby. [emoji1374] to all (the others) hope you have a fine Labor Day!
Thought I’d share a doc on YT that I get benefit from regarding covid. He’s a straight talker and his message today is timely and stark about this wave. He’s not an epidemiologist but a good source for info as this rolls on. https://youtu.be/MBIrVttxXzI

[BC.]

Not being a smartass…but why do we look at Israel as guidance for data/what’s coming? Why Israel?..and not other countries?

[SumJongGuy]

Thank you to the healthcare workers in the TGR community- people like M.unicorn & bibby. [emoji1374] to all (the others) hope you have a fine Labor Day!
Thought I’d share a doc on YT that I get benefit from regarding covid. He’s a straight talker and his message today is timely and stark about this wave. He’s not an epidemiologist but a good source for info as this rolls on. https://youtu.be/MBIrVttxXzI

Agreed.. and even though we hear similar accounts of the horrors and carnage.. it's still always sobering and shocking to hear it first hand from someone here or from family/close friends on the front lines..

[Mazderati]

@BC. First country to have a large percentage of its pop vaccinated.

[BC.]

@BC. First country to have a large percentage of its pop vaccinated.

Thanks…I can’t wait till they say cases are going down in Israel……and there is hope this is all under control.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

Thank you to the healthcare workers in the TGR community- people like M.unicorn & bibby. [emoji1374] to all (the others) hope you have a fine Labor Day!
Thought I’d share a doc on YT that I get benefit from regarding covid. He’s a straight talker and his message today is timely and stark about this wave. He’s not an epidemiologist but a good source for info as this rolls on. https://youtu.be/MBIrVttxXzI

I’ve had the conversation about why are people not getting vaccinated countless times now. This is going to have repercussions that last a long time. I’m close enough to retirement age that I will just grind it out. I’ve been in worse situations, Gulf War 1, but this is just dragging on and on unnecessarily. A lot of my younger coworkers are starting to question if a career in healthcare is really worth it.


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[old goat]

Anyone catch last nights 60 Minutes and the DOD responses to Covid?


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/last-pa...es-2021-09-05/

Yeah, I caught that when they first showed. Impressive program. It almost makes you want to turn a blind eye to some of the other stuff DARPA is probably doing. Hope you caught the segment on the Ritchie Boys--I missed that one first time around. Impressive stuff and those guys they interviewed are still impressive today--almost makes it seem not so bad to live to 100, not that I have any chance to do that.

Not being a smartass…but why do we look at Israel as guidance for data/what’s coming? Why Israel?..and not other countries?

Because of Israel's early high vaccination rate and its ability to keep track of the health of all its citizens (but not all its inhabitants).


I asked a question a few days ago--if anyone answered it I missed it. Are the schedules for the routine vaccines, most of which have 3-5 shots, based on antibody levels and other markers, or on increasing rates of clinical infection indicating inadequate immunity. Are the covid vaccines being subjected to closer scrutiny regarding boosters than other vaccines that have long required boosters?

[CascadeLuke]

I’ve had the conversation about why are people not getting vaccinated countless times now. This is going to have repercussions that last a long time. I’m close enough to retirement age that I will just grind it out. I’ve been in worse situations, Gulf War 1, but this is just dragging on and on unnecessarily. A lot of my younger coworkers are starting to question if a career in healthcare is really worth it.


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It’s must be very taxing. The ripple affects are most definitely going to cause repercussions in many ways.
Wanted to add Tri-U and Mofro to my personal thank you’s. Hope everyone gets a powder release before to long.
The fact we were at about 5k case a day avg at the start of summer and now we’re bouncing around the 190k mark heading into fall is shitty.

[SumJongGuy]

Yeah, I caught that when they first showed. Impressive program. It almost makes you want to turn a blind eye to some of the other stuff DARPA is probably doing. Hope you caught the segment on the Ritchie Boys--I missed that one first time around. Impressive stuff and those guys they interviewed are still impressive today--almost makes it seem not so bad to live to 100, not that I have any chance to do that.

I watched that. We were sitting there wondering how young they had to have been in the mid 1940s until they said that one was 97. Whoa! He didn't look a day over 75.

[bennymac]

[Casey E]

A good quick look at vaccine hesitancy in select countries https://morningconsult.com/global-vaccine-tracking/

Only the ruskies are doing (much) worse than the US



"The latest data is based on surveys conducted in 15 countries between August 24-30, 2021, with 47,351 interviews in the United States and between 2,275 to 5,824 interviews in the other 14 countries. Updates will be provided weekly.

In order to gauge vaccination rates and interest, Morning Consult asked adults in each country “Have you gotten the vaccine, or not?” Respondents could reply “Yes,” “No, but I will get it in the future,” “No, and I am not sure if I will get it in the future,” or “No, and I do not plan to get it.”"

And the US hesitancy is not budging much.

[funkendrenchman]

I wonder what the vaccine hesitancy would be had Trump never been in politics.

[Skidog]

How does one even argue with right wing nuts who still go with "Israel"? I mean I'm GOP mostly (we all know), but fuck a duck I'm as fed up as you liberal nuts anymore.

Ill still play devil's advocate like a mother fucker though.

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[Skidog]

I wonder what the vaccine hesitancy would be had Trump never been in politics.

This is an excellent question. Can someone get a hold of a Delorean and a flux capacitor?

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[jono]

I'm not sure if this is a counterpoint to that thought or not--maybe it tempers it, maybe it just shows how well "politics" (and many other things) have been leveraged. But in any case, it's the point of the spear on that other pandemic we're having (notice the top and bottom countries of that hesitancy chart Casey posted):

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/ran..._RRA112-11.pdf

[jono]

I just learned that one of my oldest, longevity and age, ski friends is in the hospital with Covid. He’s 70 something and unvaccinated. I kind of lost touch with him, he went full Trumptard in ‘15 and got lost in it all. I hope he pulls through, in general he’s a pretty decent guy.

Sorry, man. I hope he pulls through and can ski again. Similar experience here lately just ended in a funeral for a grandma who likely got it via grandkids, who were barely sick but got dad and grandpa (one vaxed and one not) plenty sick.

Rationally this seems obvious and inevitable. But fuck me sideways. There's no way to stay rational about a 5 yo who's learning about death by losing her grandma and will suspect herself and parents when she's studying this whole thing in 10-15 years. Innocent and totally naive. And can't be asked to mask because "think of the children!" ...who get to sing for grandma and plant kisses on a coffin. It's not the kids' fault. Obviously.

Even the poor, misinformed people trying to raise them are doing the best they can, too--grandma was supposed to be vaxed the day she died. But the melee is too much. Leaves them "cautious." Hesitant. Waiting. Thinking the side effects need a two week window and not everyone should go at once. Because their idiot relations (who can't be bothered to stop lying even now about her vax status) may not really be right, but then again, maybe they know...something?

Make Black Mirror fiction again.

[mcski]

The latest idiocy shared by a former childhood friend:

Shes representative of the obstinate demo. Jumps from one outlying kook theory to another but any factual/legit data is “liberal media”

[lucknau]

Thank you to the healthcare workers in the TGR community- people like M.unicorn & bibby. [emoji1374] to all (the others) hope you have a fine Labor Day!
Thought I’d share a doc on YT that I get benefit from regarding covid. He’s a straight talker and his message today is timely and stark about this wave. He’s not an epidemiologist but a good source for info as this rolls on. https://youtu.be/MBIrVttxXzI

Thanks. I guess I’ve been pretty checked out lately. I missed hearing about monoclonal antibodies.

[Casey E]

Chile to start vaccinating children 6-12 years old with Sinovac

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...s-young-as-six

The hope is to stay one step ahead of delta. Borders are still closed to foreigners.

[SumJongGuy]

The latest idiocy shared by a former childhood friend:

Shes representative of the obstinate demo. Jumps from one outlying kook theory to another but any factual/legit data is “liberal media”

LOL that's the opposite of the vaccine model.. The more people that are vaccinated, the fewer opportunities the virus has to mutate in to vaccine resistant mutations. Vaccines in arms don't cause mutations, they prevent them..

[MontuckyFried]

So, here's what I find pretty disheartening. Even if we theoretically got the US to 100% vaccination, including all children, how much would we be eventually screwed anyway since it seems that all the latest variants in the news are foreign in nature? Delta? ...India. Mu? ...Columbia. "Doomsday" variant? ...South Africa. Unlike things as visibly hardcore as ebola or smallpox, since this thing can get passed around pretty silently, so long as there's even ONE unvaccinated person somewhere on the planet harboring it, will it not always have a chance to proliferate?

Reminds me of that movie 28 Weeks Later. They thought they had the virus completely eliminated. They found ONE person who survived, who had some kind of natural immunity to it, she was in quarantine to be examined, her dumbass husband sneaks in, sneaks in a kiss, and boom. The zombie apocalypse kicks right back off.

I do get the point that at least with vaccination, you can minimize the impact the virus may have on you, but with each new variant proving more resilient against the vaccine, feels like we'll be playing whack-a-mole with future boosters. I have a bad feeling it's already looking like it's going to be like dealing with another type of coronavirus. The common cold.

[schuss]

So, here's what I find pretty disheartening. Even if we theoretically got the US to 100% vaccination, including all children, how much would we be eventually screwed anyway since it seems that all the latest variants in the news are foreign in nature? Delta? ...India. Mu? ...Columbia. "Doomsday" variant? ...South Africa. Unlike things as visibly hardcore as ebola or smallpox, since this thing can get passed around pretty silently, so long as there's even ONE unvaccinated person somewhere on the planet harboring it, will it not always have a chance to proliferate?

Reminds me of that movie 28 Weeks Later. They thought they had the virus completely eliminated. They found ONE person who survived, who had some kind of natural immunity to it, she was in quarantine to be examined, her dumbass husband sneaks in, sneaks in a kiss, and boom. The zombie apocalypse kicks right back off.

I do get the point that at least with vaccination, you can minimize the impact the virus may have on you, but with each new variant proving more resilient against the vaccine, feels like we'll be playing whack-a-mole with future boosters. I have a bad feeling it's already looking like it's going to be like dealing with another type of coronavirus. The common cold.

"I am jumping to conclusions about things I know nothing about and therefore think we shouldn't try".

Nah. Vaccines are incredibly effective against it, reducing hospitalization by tenfold or so at a minimum. In many other cases, you just don't get it. The only way these variants develop are in vast reservoirs of friendly environments aka unvaccinated people. Also, given the tremendous success of the mRNA techniques, we'll be able to get off the blocks in downing dangerous variants much more quickly than with older, more traditional methods.

[MontuckyFried]

"I am jumping to conclusions about things I know nothing about and therefore think we shouldn't try".

Did I say we shouldn't try anywhere in my post? Now, who's the one jumping to conclusions?

I was merely expressing concern about the future variants. I know everyone here wants to just blame the unvaccinated among us, but seems that we're kind of misplacing that fear when every hard core variant comes from external places anyway. Again, see: Delta (India), Mu (Columbia), "Doomsday" (South Africa), etc. Not that we won't be cooking up something nasty on our own, thus I still very much get the need for vaccinating as many people domestically as possible. However, that doesn't negate my point. As long as someone, somewhere, anywhere on the planet has it, it will ALWAYS have a chance to spread all over again.

[jono]

It's so weird how the brain works. A year ago we were trying to convince you that this possibility made it important for you and other "lower risk" people to mask and SD and now you're so concerned about it that you seem to over-estimate the risk.

As long as someone, somewhere, anywhere on the planet has it, it will ALWAYS have a chance to spread all over again.

Possible and probable are two different things. There have been 22M cases documented worldwide so far. Probably under-counted by, what, 2-10x? India alone looks drastically low at the moment. Maybe the real number is ~100M. The rate of mutations per infection is very small--we just have a huge number of infections.

You're not wrong to be concerned, but get your hands around the scale a little better: yes, we need to attack this thing as if to eradicate it. No, we don't need to get down to zero in order to contain the mutation risk.

If we get to a place where the average infection spreads to less than 1 other person it will start to die out. Trying to do that by infecting everyone (even if 1/70 have already had it) would certainly bring more mutations and some of them worse. But if further spread is limited to, say, 50% of what we've already seen, then that is a much lower mutation risk than what "1 person and we're screwed forever" implies.

[MultiVerse]

Yeah, variants are caused mostly by large populations being unvaccinated. While the media loves talking about scariants, none of the other variants right now can compete with Delta. And fully vaccinated people can already generate some antibodies against all the known variants. As we individually gain immunity we also collectively gain immunity and more immunity. So not right now of course, but it's going to be fine. The vaccinated immunocompetent neuter the virus and bring cases down. When a vaxxed person is exposed they gain even stronger hybrid immunity. Over time the virus is defanged becoming an endemic version we can live with.