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So, will you refuse tetanus boosters as well? Flu shots? Malaria, et.al.? This reluctance to accept medications that have proven to minimize the impact of dead

So, will you refuse tetanus boosters as well? Flu shots? Malaria, et.al.? This reluctance to accept medications that have proven to minimize the impact of deadly infections doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

calpp 5y ago
We have been over this so many times here: Tetanus and Malaria also affect younger people, median COVID-19 fatality age is over 80. No one criticizes an 80 year old for getting vaccinated. Herd immunity is elusive, as we see in regions with 95% vaxxed.
- vlovich123 5y ago
  The vaccines help protect you from long COVID and from very serious complications that can form (or even death). It is very misleading to imply that only old people suffer from that as there are countless stories of “I have a 35 yold friend with no pre-existing conditions who’s fighting for their lives”. If it were only old people the hospital situations would look drastically different and we wouldn’t have capacity issues. We maybe are now better at saving those people than at the start of the pandemic but we’re not perfect yet. Hopefully the COVID pills coming out to treat it are going to meaningfully reduce the outsized burden anti-vaxx people are putting on the health care system (overwhelmingly, if not even exclusively, the people ending up in hospital due to COVID are unvaccinated)
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    > there are countless stories of “I have a 35 yold friend with no pre-existing conditions who’s fighting for their lives” You can't say this about rare serious COVID cases but also point out that the plural of anecdote is not data when other people say similar things about rare serious vaccine side effects.
  - rkk3 5y ago
    > It is very misleading to imply that only old people suffer from that as there are countless stories of “I have a 35 yold friend with no pre-existing conditions who’s fighting for their lives” Those stories are breathlessly reported on because they are rare, 2.4% of Covid Deaths in the US are people under the age of 40[1] which is 50% of the US population, it's harder to find data but most of them had whom had other issues or were not direct covid deaths. Covid Risk goes up orders of magnitude by age [2]. [11 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-age.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi...
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      Furthermore, that 2.4% is composed nearly entirely of unvaccinated individuals (~99%). Chance of death or hospitalization from covid is exceedingly small for vaccinated individuals <40. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-s...
    - vlovich123 5y ago
      Nowhere am I saying that failure to get a vaccine puts you at risk of death. I'm saying they get hospitalized [1]. 60-69 yolds had ~2k hospitalizations last week 50-59 yolds had 1.5k hospitalizations last week 40-49 yolds had 1k hospitalizations last week 30-39 yolds had ~1k hospitalizations last week Thus we see each age range has roughly the same number of hospitalizations. Not sure how this correlates on a per capita basis although in this case it doesn't really matter since the healthcare system is a shared resource. Why are hospitalizations important? At this point, you dying or having complications from a failure to vaccinate is thankfully mostly your own problem since vaccinations are supremely effective at preventing this regardless of the COVID strain from the looks of it. Overwhelming the medical system and placing an undue burden on it because of refusal to vaccinate is why we're still facing lockdowns due to spikes of variants. Hopefully with the new treatment pill and evolutionary direction Omicron is taking means we're on our way out of the pandemic. Again, focusing on the mortality when a massive problem is overwhelming our shortstaffed medical system is myopic. 25% of hospitalizations result in an ICU visit [2]. > Patients who were hospitalized more recently with COVID-19 (April to June 2021) were younger (median age of 59 compared with 68) and experienced lower in-hospital death rates (10% compared with 18%) than those who were hospitalized between January 2020 and March 2021. This indicates the old people are smartly getting vaccinated or dying off. But again, deaths is not the primary problem the unvaccinated have at this point. Primarily they form a reservoir for the virus to mutate and put burden the health care system. [1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#new-hospital-admissions https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#new-hospital-admis... [2] https://www.cihi.ca/en/covid-19-hospitalization-and-emergency-department-statistics https://www.cihi.ca/en/covid-19-hospitalization-and-emergenc...
- nradov 5y ago
  The Delta and Omicron variants are sufficiently contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect. Everyone will eventually be exposed. https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
emteycz 5y ago
Tetanus booster is once every 10 years or so, isn't it? Flu shots aren't a requirement, are they?
- falcolas 5y ago
  The time frame for a booster is based on the longevity of its protection. The flu shot (and many others) are required for some professions. Protection for the vulnerable they interact with. Opinion: if you don’t want to protect the vulnerable in society, you should refrain from participating in it.
  - vizzah 5y ago
    Aren't the vulnerable already protected with boosters? Where is the logic?
    - falcolas 5y ago
      Like the flu shots, there are people who legitimately (shorthand for “have a medical reason”) can’t get vaccinated.
    - earthicus 5y ago
      My vulnerability is that I take immunosuppresants, which makes the vaccines significantly less effective (last I heard a few months ago, fully half of the breakthrough infections of the vaccinated were in the small population of immunosuppressed people).
      - vizzah 5y ago
        OK, I get your point. It's an ideological dilemma then - you'd prefer as many people around you to be vaccinated and boosted to lessen your chance of getting infected (although, even those boosted could transmit). On the other hand, those younger cohorts getting vaccines mostly to protect the others are subjecting themselves to low, but still tangible risk of getting vaccine complications. So there is some altruism at play and this is something which shouldn't definitely be mandated by the governments. (PS: It's good that very effective pills are now coming to help immunosuppressed).
blub 5y ago
It’s not proven how good this booster is. A (preliminary?) study was showing recently that the protection against infection fades away after merely 10 weeks.
- falcolas 5y ago
  And? Thats >10 weeks of protection at no monetary cost to you. Its not some different product, its the same vaccine.
  - blub 5y ago
    The benefits are always balanced against the potential harm. For young males, the risk of myocarditis from the vaccine may be comparable to that from the disease according to a UK study - until that’s clarified, booster mandates have no place in colleges.
    - ZoomerCretin 5y ago
      Myocarditis is only one COVID-19 symptom. The total risk of injury and death is far higher from COVID-19 than the vaccine.
      - blub 5y ago
        We’re talking about already vaccinated individuals which are protected against harm and now should get a booster that’s associated in a study with increased risk of myocarditis. This connection must be studied more before anybody thinks about mandating boosters.
  - qvq 5y ago
    The cost is potential health risks associated with taking the vaccine/booster. We don't know exactly why myocarditis rates are elevated and some people would rather wait for more information.
    - ada1981 5y ago
insickness 5y ago
I may not refuse tetanus and flu shots but I will 100% retain my RIGHT to refuse those shots. It's 100% the responsibility of the government to prove both the utmost necessity and the spread-prevention efficacy of any medical procedure the government forces upon its citizens.
- falcolas 5y ago
  And society has an equal right to quarantine people who could spread a deadly, infectious disease to protect the vulnerable. As George Washington himself did. Whose rights are greater?
  - insickness 5y ago
    > Whose rights are greater? No one's "rights are greater." This is a false dichotomy. Does the government have a right to force people to take the flu shot? No. If a flu came along that was so deadly that the government wanted to force people to get the flu shot, then the government would need to prove the necessity and the spread-prevention efficacy of that medical procedure.
    - ZoomerCretin 5y ago
      >Does the government have a right to force people to take the flu shot? No. If you're talking about the United States, this question has been settled at the federal level by the Supreme Court for over a century. At the state level, the first vaccine mandate was in 1809. Most states have vaccine mandates for children, many of them with only medical exemptions. It's legal. It's not some great infringement on your rights.
      - peteradio 5y ago
        > It's not some great infringement on your rights. The fact that the treatment varies state by state shows that people do consider this to be a right worth retaining, and in high enough populations to hold sway over local Government up to the state level.
cik2e 5y ago
What doesn't make a lot of sense is comparing vaccines that have been around for ages (tetanus, flu) to ones that were developed like yesterday (COVID, malaria). I have the COVID vaccine but that doesn't mean I am not concerned about potential long-term effects that we know nothing about. That, and the possibility of original antigenic sin [0] permanently screwing over our ability to mount an effective immune response to novel strains. What justification is there for pushing a non-sterilizing vaccine, that doesn't prevent spread, on non-vulnerable populations? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin
- q1w2 5y ago
  Even if it's not sterilizing, it does reduce the spread. Lower viral loads means less virus transmission.
- basch 5y ago
  Let's say antigenic sin fears became a reality. Then the short term solution is mass production of a next gen regeneron regencov? Or a different enough vaccine that causes a response? What leads you to believe long-term effects are possible?
ekianjo 5y ago
> have proven to minimize the impact of deadly infections if Omicron is as mild as shown by the current data, you won't be able to show any kind of baseline difference between boosted and unboosted.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  > if Omicron is as mild as shown by the current data, you won't be able to show any kind of baseline difference between boosted and unboosted. That's a massive if to base a health care system on. Like, look at the incentives. If they over-react and Omicron is much less severe, people will be upset but they'll get over it. If they under-react, and it turns out to be Delta-level with much more vaccine escape, that will be much, much worse. And this is one of those un-reversable decisions beloved (or hated, I guess) by Jeff Bezos.
vmception 5y ago
This is a good question I've been also trying to get an answer to, and I've never had a reason to ask before now: with the seasonal flu drive are we often reusing a prior season's flu vaccine? I always assumed they developed new ones all the time, is the answer "it depends"?
- nradov 5y ago
  Seasonal flu vaccines are reformulated every year based on the circulating virus strains. Leftover doses from the previous season are discarded, not reused. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/flushot.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/flushot.htm
tinus_hn 5y ago
The tetanus vaccine has been used for over a century, it really is not comparable to a rushed vaccine like those against COVID.
lenkite 5y ago
I think the Covid vaccines have proven to be utterly ineffective compared to other shots. No one talks about "Covid immunity" via vaccine but the 'immunity' word is overwhelmingly used for other vaccines. Looks like Pfizer/BioNTech made bank and laughing their way while rising in the top billionaires list. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/malaria-vaccines-provide-strong-lasting-immunity https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/malaria... Dec: "The co-founder of BioNTech SE on Thursday joined the world's 500 richest people after the U.K. this week approved use of a Covid-19 vaccine that the German firm created with Pfizer Inc."

calpp 5y ago

We have been over this so many times here: Tetanus and Malaria also affect younger people, median COVID-19 fatality age is over 80. No one criticizes an 80 year old for getting vaccinated. Herd immunity is elusive, as we see in regions with 95% vaxxed.

vlovich123 5y ago
The vaccines help protect you from long COVID and from very serious complications that can form (or even death). It is very misleading to imply that only old people suffer from that as there are countless stories of “I have a 35 yold friend with no pre-existing conditions who’s fighting for their lives”. If it were only old people the hospital situations would look drastically different and we wouldn’t have capacity issues. We maybe are now better at saving those people than at the start of the pandemic but we’re not perfect yet. Hopefully the COVID pills coming out to treat it are going to meaningfully reduce the outsized burden anti-vaxx people are putting on the health care system (overwhelmingly, if not even exclusively, the people ending up in hospital due to COVID are unvaccinated)
- josephcsible 5y ago
  > there are countless stories of “I have a 35 yold friend with no pre-existing conditions who’s fighting for their lives” You can't say this about rare serious COVID cases but also point out that the plural of anecdote is not data when other people say similar things about rare serious vaccine side effects.
- rkk3 5y ago
  > It is very misleading to imply that only old people suffer from that as there are countless stories of “I have a 35 yold friend with no pre-existing conditions who’s fighting for their lives” Those stories are breathlessly reported on because they are rare, 2.4% of Covid Deaths in the US are people under the age of 40[1] which is 50% of the US population, it's harder to find data but most of them had whom had other issues or were not direct covid deaths. Covid Risk goes up orders of magnitude by age [2]. [11 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-age.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi...
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Furthermore, that 2.4% is composed nearly entirely of unvaccinated individuals (~99%). Chance of death or hospitalization from covid is exceedingly small for vaccinated individuals <40. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-s...
  - vlovich123 5y ago
    Nowhere am I saying that failure to get a vaccine puts you at risk of death. I'm saying they get hospitalized [1]. 60-69 yolds had ~2k hospitalizations last week 50-59 yolds had 1.5k hospitalizations last week 40-49 yolds had 1k hospitalizations last week 30-39 yolds had ~1k hospitalizations last week Thus we see each age range has roughly the same number of hospitalizations. Not sure how this correlates on a per capita basis although in this case it doesn't really matter since the healthcare system is a shared resource. Why are hospitalizations important? At this point, you dying or having complications from a failure to vaccinate is thankfully mostly your own problem since vaccinations are supremely effective at preventing this regardless of the COVID strain from the looks of it. Overwhelming the medical system and placing an undue burden on it because of refusal to vaccinate is why we're still facing lockdowns due to spikes of variants. Hopefully with the new treatment pill and evolutionary direction Omicron is taking means we're on our way out of the pandemic. Again, focusing on the mortality when a massive problem is overwhelming our shortstaffed medical system is myopic. 25% of hospitalizations result in an ICU visit [2]. > Patients who were hospitalized more recently with COVID-19 (April to June 2021) were younger (median age of 59 compared with 68) and experienced lower in-hospital death rates (10% compared with 18%) than those who were hospitalized between January 2020 and March 2021. This indicates the old people are smartly getting vaccinated or dying off. But again, deaths is not the primary problem the unvaccinated have at this point. Primarily they form a reservoir for the virus to mutate and put burden the health care system. [1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#new-hospital-admissions https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#new-hospital-admis... [2] https://www.cihi.ca/en/covid-19-hospitalization-and-emergency-department-statistics https://www.cihi.ca/en/covid-19-hospitalization-and-emergenc...
nradov 5y ago
The Delta and Omicron variants are sufficiently contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect. Everyone will eventually be exposed. https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

emteycz 5y ago

Tetanus booster is once every 10 years or so, isn't it? Flu shots aren't a requirement, are they?

falcolas 5y ago
The time frame for a booster is based on the longevity of its protection. The flu shot (and many others) are required for some professions. Protection for the vulnerable they interact with. Opinion: if you don’t want to protect the vulnerable in society, you should refrain from participating in it.
- vizzah 5y ago
  Aren't the vulnerable already protected with boosters? Where is the logic?
  - falcolas 5y ago
    Like the flu shots, there are people who legitimately (shorthand for “have a medical reason”) can’t get vaccinated.
  - earthicus 5y ago
    My vulnerability is that I take immunosuppresants, which makes the vaccines significantly less effective (last I heard a few months ago, fully half of the breakthrough infections of the vaccinated were in the small population of immunosuppressed people).
    - vizzah 5y ago
      OK, I get your point. It's an ideological dilemma then - you'd prefer as many people around you to be vaccinated and boosted to lessen your chance of getting infected (although, even those boosted could transmit). On the other hand, those younger cohorts getting vaccines mostly to protect the others are subjecting themselves to low, but still tangible risk of getting vaccine complications. So there is some altruism at play and this is something which shouldn't definitely be mandated by the governments. (PS: It's good that very effective pills are now coming to help immunosuppressed).

blub 5y ago

It’s not proven how good this booster is. A (preliminary?) study was showing recently that the protection against infection fades away after merely 10 weeks.

falcolas 5y ago
And? Thats >10 weeks of protection at no monetary cost to you. Its not some different product, its the same vaccine.
- blub 5y ago
  The benefits are always balanced against the potential harm. For young males, the risk of myocarditis from the vaccine may be comparable to that from the disease according to a UK study - until that’s clarified, booster mandates have no place in colleges.
  - ZoomerCretin 5y ago
    Myocarditis is only one COVID-19 symptom. The total risk of injury and death is far higher from COVID-19 than the vaccine.
    - blub 5y ago
      We’re talking about already vaccinated individuals which are protected against harm and now should get a booster that’s associated in a study with increased risk of myocarditis. This connection must be studied more before anybody thinks about mandating boosters.
- qvq 5y ago
  The cost is potential health risks associated with taking the vaccine/booster. We don't know exactly why myocarditis rates are elevated and some people would rather wait for more information.
  - ada1981 5y ago

insickness 5y ago

I may not refuse tetanus and flu shots but I will 100% retain my RIGHT to refuse those shots. It's 100% the responsibility of the government to prove both the utmost necessity and the spread-prevention efficacy of any medical procedure the government forces upon its citizens.

falcolas 5y ago
And society has an equal right to quarantine people who could spread a deadly, infectious disease to protect the vulnerable. As George Washington himself did. Whose rights are greater?
- insickness 5y ago
  > Whose rights are greater? No one's "rights are greater." This is a false dichotomy. Does the government have a right to force people to take the flu shot? No. If a flu came along that was so deadly that the government wanted to force people to get the flu shot, then the government would need to prove the necessity and the spread-prevention efficacy of that medical procedure.
  - ZoomerCretin 5y ago
    >Does the government have a right to force people to take the flu shot? No. If you're talking about the United States, this question has been settled at the federal level by the Supreme Court for over a century. At the state level, the first vaccine mandate was in 1809. Most states have vaccine mandates for children, many of them with only medical exemptions. It's legal. It's not some great infringement on your rights.
    - peteradio 5y ago
      > It's not some great infringement on your rights. The fact that the treatment varies state by state shows that people do consider this to be a right worth retaining, and in high enough populations to hold sway over local Government up to the state level.

cik2e 5y ago

What doesn't make a lot of sense is comparing vaccines that have been around for ages (tetanus, flu) to ones that were developed like yesterday (COVID, malaria). I have the COVID vaccine but that doesn't mean I am not concerned about potential long-term effects that we know nothing about. That, and the possibility of original antigenic sin [0] permanently screwing over our ability to mount an effective immune response to novel strains. What justification is there for pushing a non-sterilizing vaccine, that doesn't prevent spread, on non-vulnerable populations? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin

q1w2 5y ago
Even if it's not sterilizing, it does reduce the spread. Lower viral loads means less virus transmission.
basch 5y ago
Let's say antigenic sin fears became a reality. Then the short term solution is mass production of a next gen regeneron regencov? Or a different enough vaccine that causes a response? What leads you to believe long-term effects are possible?

ekianjo 5y ago

> have proven to minimize the impact of deadly infections if Omicron is as mild as shown by the current data, you won't be able to show any kind of baseline difference between boosted and unboosted.

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
> if Omicron is as mild as shown by the current data, you won't be able to show any kind of baseline difference between boosted and unboosted. That's a massive if to base a health care system on. Like, look at the incentives. If they over-react and Omicron is much less severe, people will be upset but they'll get over it. If they under-react, and it turns out to be Delta-level with much more vaccine escape, that will be much, much worse. And this is one of those un-reversable decisions beloved (or hated, I guess) by Jeff Bezos.

vmception 5y ago

This is a good question I've been also trying to get an answer to, and I've never had a reason to ask before now: with the seasonal flu drive are we often reusing a prior season's flu vaccine? I always assumed they developed new ones all the time, is the answer "it depends"?

nradov 5y ago
Seasonal flu vaccines are reformulated every year based on the circulating virus strains. Leftover doses from the previous season are discarded, not reused. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/flushot.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/flushot.htm

tinus_hn 5y ago

The tetanus vaccine has been used for over a century, it really is not comparable to a rushed vaccine like those against COVID.

lenkite 5y ago

I think the Covid vaccines have proven to be utterly ineffective compared to other shots. No one talks about "Covid immunity" via vaccine but the 'immunity' word is overwhelmingly used for other vaccines. Looks like Pfizer/BioNTech made bank and laughing their way while rising in the top billionaires list. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/malaria-vaccines-provide-strong-lasting-immunity https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/malaria... Dec: "The co-founder of BioNTech SE on Thursday joined the world's 500 richest people after the U.K. this week approved use of a Covid-19 vaccine that the German firm created with Pfizer Inc."