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The whole booster conversation seems like a political game. If you have a vaccine, then your risk of death is far below that of the flu (statistically). If yo

The whole booster conversation seems like a political game. 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.

CydeWeys 5y ago
> 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. 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.
- deleted 5y ago
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- pasquinelli 5y ago
  it's really simple: you ration care according to the urgency of need. it's no different than any other event that would bring more people to the hospital than usual. 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.
  - zaccusl 5y ago
    Serious questions: 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".
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    > 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. 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.
- samtheprogram 5y ago
  Where are people dying because the hospitals are too full of unvaccinated patients dying of COVID-19?
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    On the twitter!
  - Frondo 5y ago
    In Southern Oregon, people with cancer or who are at risk of heart attack or stroke are being made to wait for care, because the hospitals are filled with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients: https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2021/09/absolutely-heartbreaking-week-of-deaths-at-southern-oregon-hospital.html 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.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      I mean the government and these private hospitals had a year and a half to build capacity. Last I checked building capacity was supposed to be the rationale for the whole “flatten the curve” thing back in March of 2020. 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?
      - supercheetah 5y ago
        Doctors and nurses don't get built in a year.
        spookthesunset 5y ago
        That seems like such an excuse. A year and a half is plenty of time to get creative. Pull people out of retirement. Let nursing students do more. Pay truckloads of money to all of them. I dunno. Figure it out. These folks are supposed to be the “experts”… what have they been doing this whole time? Saying “no it cannot be done” is just not a valid excuse.
MontagFTB 5y ago
I believe a serious issue with your “protect the unvaccinated” statement is it overlooks the amount of pressure they exert on our shared medical system. If your hospital beds are overrun with unvaccinated Covid patients, there is less room for others.
- wang_li 5y ago
  We could address the hospitalization issue by doing a better job of deciding when to hospitalize. It seems that more than half of the cases of those who are taking spaces in hospitals are asymptomstic, mild, or incidental. https://news.yahoo.com/57-percent-vaccinated-covid-19-203448111.html https://news.yahoo.com/57-percent-vaccinated-covid-19-203448...
  - frumper 5y ago
    They're in the hospital for other reasons.
  - kritiko 5y ago
    That study is based on VA data and not reflective of the general population. It seems very problematic to talk as if that's true for all hospitals.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > hospital beds are overrun with unvaccinated Covid patients, there is less room for others 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.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
    I was there too. I was also in Boise, and Twin Falls, ID. 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.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> If you don't have a vaccine by now, you want covid instead and this booster conversation is irrelevant 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.
- thesis 5y ago
  Yikes. Idiots? All this condescension all the time. 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.
  - _kulang 5y ago
    Doesn’t hurt to get vaccinated anyway. In fact that should offer the most protection overall. And that’s besides the point as the recovered may as well be vaccinated in the context of this discussion.
    - adamrezich 5y ago
      somebody's gotta be the control group in all of this, I'll take one for the team, in the name of Science
  - rattlesnakedave 5y ago
    I’m not sure what else you would call someone with such a skewed risk assessment that they think taking a vaccine that has proven to be incredibly safe and effective, provided free of charge, isn’t worth their time. Research has not yet shown how long you are protected from getting COVID-19 again after you recover from COVID-19. We have a much better idea with the vaccines. Even more, studies suggest that unvaccinated people who already had COVID-19 are more than 2 times as likely than fully vaccinated people to get COVID-19 again. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm There is NO reason to not be vaccinated at this point if you can be.
tw04 5y ago
>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. 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.
- pkulak 5y ago
  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. 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.
  - adolph 5y ago
    How are they going to model efficacy if child mortality is very low already?
    - ufo 5y ago
      I think the first efficacy data is going to be about preventing infections. Data about preventing deaths will take longer to obtain.
      - 5y ago
tomerv 5y ago
> 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. 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.
- pbaka 5y ago
  > taking a booster shot and someone in a 3rd world country without access to vaccines is irrelevant It is in a world with limited production capacity, unless you think improving the odds of survival from 70%->90% in industrialized countries trumps improving 0%->90 in the rest of the planet : - The US factories are barely getting online. - 80% of the mRNA vaccines production capacity is still between Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and Spain. - Viral Vector capacity (non-Sputnik, which Russia licenses freely) is also mostly between Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and the UK, with some precursors in India.
- gitanovic 5y ago
  As long as they don't impose to me (40 y.o.) to catch a plane... fine with me 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
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    There is a good chunk of society that absolutely refuses to move on.
mattwad 5y ago
The reason for masks always has been to flatten the curve. The hospitals are too full for everyone just to get it and get it over with, so people without COVID can't get medical help. Right now, the CDC recommends everyone older than 2 years old should wear a mask indoors. This is not just to protect kids but prevent them spreading it. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/diy-cloth-face-coverings.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si....
- mgamache 5y ago
  Accept the CDCs own study of 169 K–5 schools failed to find that masks for children in schools prevent the spread. Adult masks and ventilation were supported. "The 21% lower incidence in schools that required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional." https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7021e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7021e1.htm
- defgeneric 5y ago
  Are there real statistics on just how many people are being turned away? Hasn't it always been the case that people sometimes have to be turned to another hospital? Wouldn't reform of the horrible mix of public/private hospitals make more sense? It seems to me the risk to the general population isn't really that high, it just makes news because it's a sad story when someone who had a heart attack can't get admitted because some anti-vax moron is taking up space.
- octopoc 5y ago
  There are tons of people coming into the hospitals in my part of the US who are completely asymptomatic but panicking. The solution to this isn't for everyone to wear masks, the solution is for the hospitals to redirect those people to their primary care physicians.
  - deleted 5y ago
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- pbaka 5y ago
  > Kids are dying No. Check the CDC numbers by searching "burden of pneumonia influenza". Minors 0-14 (not just kids) died twice less of covid than kids 0-5 are dying every year of classical pneumonias alone (influenza, strepto, etc). If you look through the numbers in more detail, all the minors 0-15 which died had severe comorbidities to begin with. To add to that, no kids died of pneumonias since Covid began, strangely enough (it seems keeping kids at home did that). Classical pneumonias on the other hand left 60'000 kids 0-5 each year with various lifelong lung problems, in the US alone. >FDA should provide an EUA [...] monoclonal antibodies Already done, there's just not enough manufacturing capacity, only approx. 1 factory per northern continent makes it (1 USA, 1 Switzerland).
merrywhether 5y ago
There’s a serious disconnect between public health experts and the general public, and the experts have continued to not learn that lesson over the last year plus. It’s mind-boggling. 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.
- sseagull 5y ago
  > 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. 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).
spywaregorilla 5y ago
fwiw, the US has been increasing its vaxxed % by about 3-4 points per month. Not great, but still improving.
tzs 5y ago
> If you have a vaccine, then your risk of death is far below that of the flu (statistically). 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_statistics_by_flu_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_influenza_statis... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm
- marricks 5y ago
  > 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. 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.
  - xboxnolifes 5y ago
    How is 1/3 of a number that the vast majority of people don't even blink at "depressingly high"?
    - marricks 5y ago
      Delta was the dominant variant only by end of July so the data set for the 0.1 number could have been based mostly on a virus which is 2.5x less deadly. We're now facing an endemic virus which, even with vaccination, approaches (or could get as bad as) the deadliness of the flu.
- jayd16 5y ago
  Doesn't seem quite right to compare historical flu rates of the general population to mask mandated covid rates among vaccinated. 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 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.
zamalek 5y ago
> Is it to protect the vaccinated? 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.
- deleted 5y ago
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- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  Do you know about ADE? 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-center/vaccine-safety/antibody-dependent-enhancement-and-vaccines https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-cent...
  - cthalupa 5y ago
    Your own link says that there is zero evidence of ADE being an issue with CV19 and our vaccines.
    - jaz2130 5y ago
      Luc Montagnier, a Nobel Prize winner, is quite concerned about ADE and these vaccines creating mutations. He’s also unvaccinated.
      - zamalek 5y ago
        So what? There are many more Nobel Prize winners who are vaccinated. Brilliance doesn't make you immune to stupidity.
gls2ro 5y ago
Regarding kids I think the approach to be more careful is granted: kids immune system does not work the same as in adults. 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.
beamatronic 5y ago
The risk to the vaccinated increases over time, as the protection wears off. 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.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  > Not to mention, the original version of the virus is gone, it has been outcompeted by the variants. 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.
CyanLite2 5y ago
It's to flatten the curve. Approx 10% of vaccinated still require oxygen and other medical measures. And with hospitals currently at full capacity, boosters are a short-term way to keep the hospitalization numbers low until kids can get vaccinated and every one else has had their chance before we fully open everything up once and for all.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  We’ve been flattening the curve for a year and a half. They had ample time to build capacity. Why is it not built?
macspoofing 5y ago
>Biden should frankly push legislation to replace or reform the FDA That's a very American-centric view. I'm not aware of any regulatory bodies (WHO included) which allow vaccination for kids under 12.
after_care 5y ago
> I also don't understand the mask/booster thing now. 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.
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peakaboo 5y ago
Why are all your suggestions about protecting people? Don't you realise there is a huge profit opportunity? If big pharma can get billions of people signed up for regular booster shots and new vaccines, they will become enormously powerful.

CydeWeys 5y ago

> 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. 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.

deleted 5y ago
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pasquinelli 5y ago
it's really simple: you ration care according to the urgency of need. it's no different than any other event that would bring more people to the hospital than usual. 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.
- zaccusl 5y ago
  Serious questions: 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".
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  > 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. 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.
samtheprogram 5y ago
Where are people dying because the hospitals are too full of unvaccinated patients dying of COVID-19?
- mythrwy 5y ago
  On the twitter!
- Frondo 5y ago
  In Southern Oregon, people with cancer or who are at risk of heart attack or stroke are being made to wait for care, because the hospitals are filled with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients: https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2021/09/absolutely-heartbreaking-week-of-deaths-at-southern-oregon-hospital.html 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.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    I mean the government and these private hospitals had a year and a half to build capacity. Last I checked building capacity was supposed to be the rationale for the whole “flatten the curve” thing back in March of 2020. 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?
    - supercheetah 5y ago
      Doctors and nurses don't get built in a year.
      - spookthesunset 5y ago
        That seems like such an excuse. A year and a half is plenty of time to get creative. Pull people out of retirement. Let nursing students do more. Pay truckloads of money to all of them. I dunno. Figure it out. These folks are supposed to be the “experts”… what have they been doing this whole time? Saying “no it cannot be done” is just not a valid excuse.

MontagFTB 5y ago

I believe a serious issue with your “protect the unvaccinated” statement is it overlooks the amount of pressure they exert on our shared medical system. If your hospital beds are overrun with unvaccinated Covid patients, there is less room for others.

wang_li 5y ago
We could address the hospitalization issue by doing a better job of deciding when to hospitalize. It seems that more than half of the cases of those who are taking spaces in hospitals are asymptomstic, mild, or incidental. https://news.yahoo.com/57-percent-vaccinated-covid-19-203448111.html https://news.yahoo.com/57-percent-vaccinated-covid-19-203448...
- frumper 5y ago
  They're in the hospital for other reasons.
- kritiko 5y ago
  That study is based on VA data and not reflective of the general population. It seems very problematic to talk as if that's true for all hospitals.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> hospital beds are overrun with unvaccinated Covid patients, there is less room for others 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.
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
  I was there too. I was also in Boise, and Twin Falls, ID. 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.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> If you don't have a vaccine by now, you want covid instead and this booster conversation is irrelevant 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.

thesis 5y ago
Yikes. Idiots? All this condescension all the time. 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.
- _kulang 5y ago
  Doesn’t hurt to get vaccinated anyway. In fact that should offer the most protection overall. And that’s besides the point as the recovered may as well be vaccinated in the context of this discussion.
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    somebody's gotta be the control group in all of this, I'll take one for the team, in the name of Science
- rattlesnakedave 5y ago
  I’m not sure what else you would call someone with such a skewed risk assessment that they think taking a vaccine that has proven to be incredibly safe and effective, provided free of charge, isn’t worth their time. Research has not yet shown how long you are protected from getting COVID-19 again after you recover from COVID-19. We have a much better idea with the vaccines. Even more, studies suggest that unvaccinated people who already had COVID-19 are more than 2 times as likely than fully vaccinated people to get COVID-19 again. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm There is NO reason to not be vaccinated at this point if you can be.

tw04 5y ago

>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. 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.

pkulak 5y ago
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. 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.
- adolph 5y ago
  How are they going to model efficacy if child mortality is very low already?
  - ufo 5y ago
    I think the first efficacy data is going to be about preventing infections. Data about preventing deaths will take longer to obtain.
    - 5y ago

tomerv 5y ago

> 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. 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.

pbaka 5y ago
> taking a booster shot and someone in a 3rd world country without access to vaccines is irrelevant It is in a world with limited production capacity, unless you think improving the odds of survival from 70%->90% in industrialized countries trumps improving 0%->90 in the rest of the planet : - The US factories are barely getting online. - 80% of the mRNA vaccines production capacity is still between Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and Spain. - Viral Vector capacity (non-Sputnik, which Russia licenses freely) is also mostly between Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and the UK, with some precursors in India.
gitanovic 5y ago
As long as they don't impose to me (40 y.o.) to catch a plane... fine with me 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
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  There is a good chunk of society that absolutely refuses to move on.

mattwad 5y ago

The reason for masks always has been to flatten the curve. The hospitals are too full for everyone just to get it and get it over with, so people without COVID can't get medical help. Right now, the CDC recommends everyone older than 2 years old should wear a mask indoors. This is not just to protect kids but prevent them spreading it. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/diy-cloth-face-coverings.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si....

mgamache 5y ago
Accept the CDCs own study of 169 K–5 schools failed to find that masks for children in schools prevent the spread. Adult masks and ventilation were supported. "The 21% lower incidence in schools that required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional." https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7021e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7021e1.htm
defgeneric 5y ago
Are there real statistics on just how many people are being turned away? Hasn't it always been the case that people sometimes have to be turned to another hospital? Wouldn't reform of the horrible mix of public/private hospitals make more sense? It seems to me the risk to the general population isn't really that high, it just makes news because it's a sad story when someone who had a heart attack can't get admitted because some anti-vax moron is taking up space.
octopoc 5y ago
There are tons of people coming into the hospitals in my part of the US who are completely asymptomatic but panicking. The solution to this isn't for everyone to wear masks, the solution is for the hospitals to redirect those people to their primary care physicians.
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pbaka 5y ago
> Kids are dying No. Check the CDC numbers by searching "burden of pneumonia influenza". Minors 0-14 (not just kids) died twice less of covid than kids 0-5 are dying every year of classical pneumonias alone (influenza, strepto, etc). If you look through the numbers in more detail, all the minors 0-15 which died had severe comorbidities to begin with. To add to that, no kids died of pneumonias since Covid began, strangely enough (it seems keeping kids at home did that). Classical pneumonias on the other hand left 60'000 kids 0-5 each year with various lifelong lung problems, in the US alone. >FDA should provide an EUA [...] monoclonal antibodies Already done, there's just not enough manufacturing capacity, only approx. 1 factory per northern continent makes it (1 USA, 1 Switzerland).

merrywhether 5y ago

There’s a serious disconnect between public health experts and the general public, and the experts have continued to not learn that lesson over the last year plus. It’s mind-boggling. 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.

sseagull 5y ago
> 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. 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).

spywaregorilla 5y ago

fwiw, the US has been increasing its vaxxed % by about 3-4 points per month. Not great, but still improving.

tzs 5y ago

> If you have a vaccine, then your risk of death is far below that of the flu (statistically). 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_statistics_by_flu_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_influenza_statis... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm

marricks 5y ago
> 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. 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.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  How is 1/3 of a number that the vast majority of people don't even blink at "depressingly high"?
  - marricks 5y ago
    Delta was the dominant variant only by end of July so the data set for the 0.1 number could have been based mostly on a virus which is 2.5x less deadly. We're now facing an endemic virus which, even with vaccination, approaches (or could get as bad as) the deadliness of the flu.
jayd16 5y ago
Doesn't seem quite right to compare historical flu rates of the general population to mask mandated covid rates among vaccinated. 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 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.

zamalek 5y ago

> Is it to protect the vaccinated? 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.

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SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
Do you know about ADE? 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-center/vaccine-safety/antibody-dependent-enhancement-and-vaccines https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-cent...
- cthalupa 5y ago
  Your own link says that there is zero evidence of ADE being an issue with CV19 and our vaccines.
  - jaz2130 5y ago
    Luc Montagnier, a Nobel Prize winner, is quite concerned about ADE and these vaccines creating mutations. He’s also unvaccinated.
    - zamalek 5y ago
      So what? There are many more Nobel Prize winners who are vaccinated. Brilliance doesn't make you immune to stupidity.

gls2ro 5y ago

Regarding kids I think the approach to be more careful is granted: kids immune system does not work the same as in adults. 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.

beamatronic 5y ago

The risk to the vaccinated increases over time, as the protection wears off. 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.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
> Not to mention, the original version of the virus is gone, it has been outcompeted by the variants. 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.

CyanLite2 5y ago

It's to flatten the curve. Approx 10% of vaccinated still require oxygen and other medical measures. And with hospitals currently at full capacity, boosters are a short-term way to keep the hospitalization numbers low until kids can get vaccinated and every one else has had their chance before we fully open everything up once and for all.

spookthesunset 5y ago
We’ve been flattening the curve for a year and a half. They had ample time to build capacity. Why is it not built?

macspoofing 5y ago

>Biden should frankly push legislation to replace or reform the FDA That's a very American-centric view. I'm not aware of any regulatory bodies (WHO included) which allow vaccination for kids under 12.

after_care 5y ago

> I also don't understand the mask/booster thing now. 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.

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peakaboo 5y ago

Why are all your suggestions about protecting people? Don't you realise there is a huge profit opportunity? If big pharma can get billions of people signed up for regular booster shots and new vaccines, they will become enormously powerful.