7 ms·

> I call on high-level officials and scientists to stop the inappropriate stigmatisation of unvaccinated people, who include our patients, colleagues, and other

> I call on high-level officials and scientists to stop the inappropriate stigmatisation of unvaccinated people, who include our patients, colleagues, and other fellow citizens, and to put extra effort into bringing society together. 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.

gaetgu 5y ago
> 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. 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.
- mherrmann 5y ago
  Except people might need hospital beds, urgently, for things other than COVID?
- neogodless 5y ago
  The hospitalization rate among the vaccinated is much lower.
mrfusion 5y ago
Your Russia roulette comparison is pretty disingenuous. 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/10.1101/2021.07.08.21260210v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.08.21260210v...
- peter422 5y ago
  And what are the hospitalization rates? Occupying beds and Heath care providers that could be treating conditions that are not preventable? What about long covid rates? It isn’t death or you’re fine.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    Since it appears you are advocating for policy based on those numbers, why don't you provide them?
  - nradov 5y ago
    You can find hospitalization rates by age group here. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
- bloopernova 5y ago
  What percentage of survivors get Long Covid symptoms? Is that information available broken down by age, like the IFR you're quoting?
  - mrfusion 5y ago
    I’ve never been able to find similar numbers. Let me know if you can. but I’d be curious to get your take on this French study. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2785832 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar... It seems like good news for people worried about long Covid.
brutusborn 5y ago
If you follow this reasoning, then you must also beleive that we should stigmatise people with other life choices that fill hospitals? Stigmatising obese people, people who drink alcohol, people who do extreme sports, people who have children late in life. Where does it end? 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.
- eganist 5y ago
  > If you follow this reasoning, then you must also beleive that we should stigmatise people with other life choices that fill hospitals? Stigmatising obese people, people who drink alcohol, people who do extreme sports, people who have children late in life. Where does it end? 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.
  - mardifoufs 5y ago
    Okay so do you agree on putting obesity and obese people on that list too?
    - HarryHirsch 5y ago
      The Alabama department of Public Health puts posters up asking you to walk more, eat healthy, all that stuff. So, yes, obesity is a public health problem, and it's being addressed. What are you trying to say with that comment?
      - 5y ago
Capira 5y ago
The WHO agrees with the author: 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. https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-can-take-the-pfizer-biontech-covid-19--vaccine https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-can...
- modriano 5y ago
  Actually, there is. The new-daily-cases-per-capita rate for unvaccinated people is at least 6x the rate of vaccinated people, per the most recent data in this NYT analysis [0]. And the reduction was observed for Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J vaccines. [0] Who Had Covid-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Cases? https://nyti.ms/3nFvITV https://nyti.ms/3nFvITV
  - fileeditview 5y ago
    The quote from parent was about transmission.
    - modriano 5y ago
      As every new case is a result of transmission, a difference in the per-capita rate of new cases between vaccinated and unvaccinated people shows an identical difference in the rate of transmission.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    That's the US data which is hopelessly corrupted by politics; the CDC simply hasn't been reporting honest statistics about vaccines from the start. 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.
    - pw201 5y ago
      This is incorrect: we don't know the rates, because we don't know the denominators. Published figures use estimated denominators: "because the proportion of unvaccinated people is small and the NIMS population estimates are high, it makes the unvaccinated population appear significantly larger than it is. As a consequence, the Covid case rate per 100,000 unvaccinated people, when calculated using this figure, is suppressed. Just being out by 1 or 2 per cent could change the apparent population of unvaccinated people by 30 per cent." (from https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cfaadc98-35ab-11ec-8ef4-8e6db1a4b82a?shareToken=20fd208002f5b4678d462587fde63f26 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cfaadc98-35ab-11ec-8ef4-8... )
ojbyrne 5y ago
It says “Correspondence” at the top of the page. That suggests to me that it’s the equivalent of a “Letter to the Editor.”
slibhb 5y ago
> 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 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-status-age-discrimination.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/covid-19-vaccine-sta...
- eqvinox 5y ago
  "Fully 25 percent of deaths were among vaccinated people, the county reported. How can this be? If the vaccines are so effective that they reduce mortality 42 times over, how could the vaccinated account for such a large proportion of the deaths?" 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.
  - slibhb 5y ago
    > the vaccine is in fact quite effective in reducing death in hospitalized covid cases No one in this thread, including me and the article I linked, is arguing otherwise.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    You would have to have around 94% vaccinated to have 25% of deaths be vaccinated at 42x protection. No country has that.
    - jacobolus 5y ago
profeatur 5y ago
Covid broke our institutional reality. There's clearly something about the events of the last two years that's caused a large segment of the population to instinctively reject what we're being told by authorities of all stripes. The whole issue has been so hopelessly obfuscated by political, economic and media interests that numbers simply don't matter. They've lost our confidence. Competent leaders would realize that you aren't going to change XX% of the population's minds by coercion, "nudging," or pathologizing. Resources would have been better spent on building more health care facilities, training more medical staff, and better/cheaper rapid testing. 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!"
- josephcsible 5y ago
  > There's clearly something about the events of the last two years that's caused a large segment of the population to instinctively reject what we're being told by authorities of all stripes. Indeed. The "something" is said authorities having repeatedly been caught lying.
- nvelty 5y ago
  >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. 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/2021/11/18/94-of-active-duty-marines-at-least-partially-vaccinated-as-deadline-looms/ https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2021... [2]. https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2021/11/12/oklahoma-guard-goes-rogue-rejects-covid-vaccine-mandate-after-sudden-change-of-command/ https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2021/11/12/oklahoma...
mostertoaster 5y ago
Hyperbole much? 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.

gaetgu 5y ago

> 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. 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.

mherrmann 5y ago
Except people might need hospital beds, urgently, for things other than COVID?
neogodless 5y ago
The hospitalization rate among the vaccinated is much lower.

mrfusion 5y ago

Your Russia roulette comparison is pretty disingenuous. 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/10.1101/2021.07.08.21260210v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.08.21260210v...

peter422 5y ago
And what are the hospitalization rates? Occupying beds and Heath care providers that could be treating conditions that are not preventable? What about long covid rates? It isn’t death or you’re fine.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  Since it appears you are advocating for policy based on those numbers, why don't you provide them?
- nradov 5y ago
  You can find hospitalization rates by age group here. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
bloopernova 5y ago
What percentage of survivors get Long Covid symptoms? Is that information available broken down by age, like the IFR you're quoting?
- mrfusion 5y ago
  I’ve never been able to find similar numbers. Let me know if you can. but I’d be curious to get your take on this French study. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2785832 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar... It seems like good news for people worried about long Covid.

brutusborn 5y ago

If you follow this reasoning, then you must also beleive that we should stigmatise people with other life choices that fill hospitals? Stigmatising obese people, people who drink alcohol, people who do extreme sports, people who have children late in life. Where does it end? 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.

eganist 5y ago
> If you follow this reasoning, then you must also beleive that we should stigmatise people with other life choices that fill hospitals? Stigmatising obese people, people who drink alcohol, people who do extreme sports, people who have children late in life. Where does it end? 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.
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  Okay so do you agree on putting obesity and obese people on that list too?
  - HarryHirsch 5y ago
    The Alabama department of Public Health puts posters up asking you to walk more, eat healthy, all that stuff. So, yes, obesity is a public health problem, and it's being addressed. What are you trying to say with that comment?
    - 5y ago

Capira 5y ago

The WHO agrees with the author: 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. https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-can-take-the-pfizer-biontech-covid-19--vaccine https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-can...

modriano 5y ago
Actually, there is. The new-daily-cases-per-capita rate for unvaccinated people is at least 6x the rate of vaccinated people, per the most recent data in this NYT analysis [0]. And the reduction was observed for Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J vaccines. [0] Who Had Covid-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Cases? https://nyti.ms/3nFvITV https://nyti.ms/3nFvITV
- fileeditview 5y ago
  The quote from parent was about transmission.
  - modriano 5y ago
    As every new case is a result of transmission, a difference in the per-capita rate of new cases between vaccinated and unvaccinated people shows an identical difference in the rate of transmission.
- native_samples 5y ago
  That's the US data which is hopelessly corrupted by politics; the CDC simply hasn't been reporting honest statistics about vaccines from the start. 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.
  - pw201 5y ago
    This is incorrect: we don't know the rates, because we don't know the denominators. Published figures use estimated denominators: "because the proportion of unvaccinated people is small and the NIMS population estimates are high, it makes the unvaccinated population appear significantly larger than it is. As a consequence, the Covid case rate per 100,000 unvaccinated people, when calculated using this figure, is suppressed. Just being out by 1 or 2 per cent could change the apparent population of unvaccinated people by 30 per cent." (from https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cfaadc98-35ab-11ec-8ef4-8e6db1a4b82a?shareToken=20fd208002f5b4678d462587fde63f26 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cfaadc98-35ab-11ec-8ef4-8... )

ojbyrne 5y ago

It says “Correspondence” at the top of the page. That suggests to me that it’s the equivalent of a “Letter to the Editor.”

slibhb 5y ago

> 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 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-status-age-discrimination.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/covid-19-vaccine-sta...

eqvinox 5y ago
"Fully 25 percent of deaths were among vaccinated people, the county reported. How can this be? If the vaccines are so effective that they reduce mortality 42 times over, how could the vaccinated account for such a large proportion of the deaths?" 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.
- slibhb 5y ago
  > the vaccine is in fact quite effective in reducing death in hospitalized covid cases No one in this thread, including me and the article I linked, is arguing otherwise.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  You would have to have around 94% vaccinated to have 25% of deaths be vaccinated at 42x protection. No country has that.
  - jacobolus 5y ago

profeatur 5y ago

Covid broke our institutional reality. There's clearly something about the events of the last two years that's caused a large segment of the population to instinctively reject what we're being told by authorities of all stripes. The whole issue has been so hopelessly obfuscated by political, economic and media interests that numbers simply don't matter. They've lost our confidence. Competent leaders would realize that you aren't going to change XX% of the population's minds by coercion, "nudging," or pathologizing. Resources would have been better spent on building more health care facilities, training more medical staff, and better/cheaper rapid testing. 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!"

josephcsible 5y ago
> There's clearly something about the events of the last two years that's caused a large segment of the population to instinctively reject what we're being told by authorities of all stripes. Indeed. The "something" is said authorities having repeatedly been caught lying.
nvelty 5y ago
>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. 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/2021/11/18/94-of-active-duty-marines-at-least-partially-vaccinated-as-deadline-looms/ https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2021... [2]. https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2021/11/12/oklahoma-guard-goes-rogue-rejects-covid-vaccine-mandate-after-sudden-change-of-command/ https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2021/11/12/oklahoma...

mostertoaster 5y ago

Hyperbole much? 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.