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Its almost like canceling all of humanity although it accomplishes extremely little but a CYA for the politicians is not the best way to handle this. Im sure w

by anm89 5y ago

Its almost like canceling all of humanity although it accomplishes extremely little but a CYA for the politicians is not the best way to handle this. Im sure when are fighting the 200th variant whose symptoms are a day of fatigue we will almost be ready to end the restrictions. And just for the record, im 2x vaccinated, not an antivaxxer or denier or something.

zzzeek 5y ago
It's 100% about hospital capacity and mass death. When hospitals around the country are no longer turning away cancer patients needing treatments and have plenty of ICUs for heart attacks and such, when they no longer have to rent fleets of refrigerator trucks every outbreak to store the bodies, the restrictions will end. It has always been about that and nothing more.
- trentnix 5y ago
  They could start by not terminating perfectly capable doctors and nurses who have decided, for whatever their reasons may be, to refuse vaccination. I’m vaccinated (and boosted) but I cannot understand why it was okay for these people to be on the frontlines of the fight for over a year but suddenly they are no longer acceptable. And I find no convincing argument as to why actually recovering from infection counts for nothing, but the vaccine does. The decision to terminate unvaccinated individuals reeks of bureaucracy, not an understanding of science or medicine.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    It’s pretty simple. They are more likely to get sick and more likely to infect those whose care they are entrusted with. There’s a long history of this type of sanction. If you are a provider or nurse in a hospital who fails to get a measles, hepatitis, or rabies (after exposure) shot, you’ll be terminated for cause in many places. The reason why recovery doesn’t “count” the same as vaccination is that immunity doesn’t last very long - 60-90 days typically. Some countries, such as Israel will recognize a single Pfizer dose and recovery as immune, if you have a negative PCR test.
    - trentnix 5y ago
      > It’s pretty simple. They are more likely to get sick and more likely to infect those whose care they are entrusted with. In a vacuum, that makes sense. But in the midst of genuine shortage of healthcare professionals, it's myopic foolishness. And I'd guess your comment about the lasting effect of actual recovery is going to turn out to be very wrong and already contradicts most everything I've seen recently regarding the immune response to reinfection after Covid recovery. edit: Here are a few links that contradict your statement that immunity doesn't last very long: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting-immunity-found-after-recovery-covid-19 https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting... https://www.futurity.org/covid-19-survivors-immunity-viruses-2602672/ https://www.futurity.org/covid-19-survivors-immunity-viruses...
      - tandymodel100 5y ago
        In all honesty I don't want people uneducated or conspiracy-minded enough to not take the vaccine treating me anyway even in a shortage situation.
        trentnix 5y ago
        Let them eat cake!
        claytongulick 5y ago
        You don't want people who have medical degrees and are experts in their field treating you? Because you have a better understanding of this than they do? That seems like a strange position to take. I would take a different position, like "what do these highly qualified health care workers understand that I don't?"
        belltaco 5y ago
        What percentage of doctors are unvaccinated? Or is there atleast a number or some reporting on doctors getting fired for refusing vaccinations? >I would take a different position, like "what do these highly qualified health care workers understand that I don't?" Examples?
  - gspr 5y ago
    Those doctors and nurses are little more than saboteurs. Would you hire someone who would willingly increases their own risk of being unable to work by orders of magnitude for no actual gain? Note that this is not like not hiring someone who likes to go mountain biking and therefore are more likely to hurt themselves and not work. Hobbies like that have real benefits. Vaccine denial not.
- enchiridion 5y ago
  How about scale up the hospitals, or at least covid capacity in a meaningful way. How long does they public have to bear burden of insufficient health infra. EDIT: Sorry that might have come off a bit blunt. But the entire pandemic response has been frustratingly insufficient in my opinion. A variant like Omicron was long predicted and expected. How are we not prepared with a plan to end lockdowns? And blaming unvaccinated or anti-maskers is not a good answer. Modeling of acceptance should’ve been done. It’s not like these contrarian sentiments were surprising either. All together it feels like this response to omicron is a public health failure.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    The US is a public health failure. We didn’t want “socialized” medicine. So we got what we wanted, the best nurses are making $300/hr in COVID hotspots and leaving new grads and understaffed facilities in their wake.
    - TMWNN 5y ago
      Feel free to name the country that isn't experiencing the exact same issues regarding COVID hotspots and understaffed facilities, "socialized medicine" or not.
      - Spooky23 5y ago
        Japan, Israel, South Korea, New Zealand come to mind. Honestly, it’s not very hard… the US went from the respected world leader to a public health carnival sideshow overnight. CDC is taking cues from places like South Africa and Israel now. It’s pathetic.
    - enchiridion 5y ago
      This is not a productive viewpoint, it’s defeatist. How would socialized medicine help in this specific case? More power to the government? The government already has plenty of power to influence outcomes through spending. However, that power has been applied poorly. We need mass repeal of old government regulations and the appointing of technocrats (as in people concerned with low level details of regulations). Additionally we need new highly adversarial independent regulatory bodies to prevent capitalistic interests from causing market collapse. The current agencies are too in bed with industry, and it’s not beneficial to the public. Giving more power to the current government systems which rolled out this poor response seems like the wrong answer.
- anm89 5y ago
  As many others below have pointed out, there are a variety of reasons why this narrative is extremely flimsy. All ends do not justify all means, especially when the proven correlation between the ends and the means is often lacking or doesn't support the use of the means at all.
- roenxi 5y ago
  It has been nearly 2 years. Have they considered training a few people to handle respiratory diseases and bulking up the hospitals? Nursing is hard and takes years of training, but 2 years would have been long enough to teach people how to manage the average case of 1 disease. There have been a lot of people sitting around doing not much, they could probably use the work.
  - ThalesX 5y ago
    There is also the argument for encouraging people to lead a healthier lifestyle. Even though it’s political suicide to tell people that they need to get in shape, two years of a push from the government would have had enough time to make a great impact on overall population health.
physicsgraph 5y ago
What are your thoughts on the hospitalization of infected people? Hospitals are at capacity or overflowing.
- anamax 5y ago
  If you're not running your hospital near capacity, you're losing money.
  - slenk 5y ago
    Yeah but you usually don't want every ER _and_ ICU bed full
- _dain_ 5y ago
  not in England they aren't
  - austinjp 5y ago
    Ehm.... If there not exactly at capacity, the trend isn't looking great. https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/ https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas...
    - midasuni 5y ago
      What we don’t have easy pubic access too is a breakdown of 1) total hospital admissions (not just those with covid but those without) and how that compares to a normal winter. If 4% of the country test positive for covid at the moment and 4% of hospital admissions have covid, that’s to be expected for example 2) age of those being admitted compared with covid by age 4) vaccination of those being admitted There’s a chance that the Hugh number of cases is in those who are young and vaccinated and less likely to need hospitalisation, and we’ll soon reach peak transmission and cases will drop come January without it overwhelming hospitals. There’s also a chance that it will spread to more vulnerable people, especially once school returns next week and grandparents start babysitting again, and hospitalisations will shoot up about 3rd/4th week in January as it spreads throughout the over 60s. It’s not just a matter of dividing infections by hospitalisations a week later, getting a number, and plugging it in to calculate capacity. Not is it a matter of comparing those going into hospital with covid with last year, as more cases means fewer people going in without covid.
machinelearning 5y ago
Why do you feel like you have to qualify your comment by disclosing your vaccination status? Surely that shouldn’t dictate whether you’re allowed to express your thoughts on a subject or the factual accuracy of your statements.
- mayregretit 5y ago
  I found the disclosure helpful because I had assumed they were one of those vocal antivaxxers.
- anm89 5y ago
  Because people like to group everyone in to camps so if I say anything remotely dismissive of an official covid narrative, I'm probably just some anti science, anti vaxxer, whose opinion isn't worth listening too (according to them). So at a minimum, dismiss me if you want, but not because I'm in the evil other camp, because I'm not.
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    Or perhaps because people should not be divided into the two extremes of antivax conspiracy theorists and infinite lockdown aficionados. That’s just a convenient fallacy to dismiss criticism.
- wreath 5y ago
  I agree.. but unfortunately nowadays we shove people who refuse or are skeptical about COVID vaccine in the "anti-vaxxer" basket so people have to clarify that

by anm89 5y ago

zzzeek 5y ago

It's 100% about hospital capacity and mass death. When hospitals around the country are no longer turning away cancer patients needing treatments and have plenty of ICUs for heart attacks and such, when they no longer have to rent fleets of refrigerator trucks every outbreak to store the bodies, the restrictions will end. It has always been about that and nothing more.

trentnix 5y ago
They could start by not terminating perfectly capable doctors and nurses who have decided, for whatever their reasons may be, to refuse vaccination. I’m vaccinated (and boosted) but I cannot understand why it was okay for these people to be on the frontlines of the fight for over a year but suddenly they are no longer acceptable. And I find no convincing argument as to why actually recovering from infection counts for nothing, but the vaccine does. The decision to terminate unvaccinated individuals reeks of bureaucracy, not an understanding of science or medicine.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  It’s pretty simple. They are more likely to get sick and more likely to infect those whose care they are entrusted with. There’s a long history of this type of sanction. If you are a provider or nurse in a hospital who fails to get a measles, hepatitis, or rabies (after exposure) shot, you’ll be terminated for cause in many places. The reason why recovery doesn’t “count” the same as vaccination is that immunity doesn’t last very long - 60-90 days typically. Some countries, such as Israel will recognize a single Pfizer dose and recovery as immune, if you have a negative PCR test.
  - trentnix 5y ago
    > It’s pretty simple. They are more likely to get sick and more likely to infect those whose care they are entrusted with. In a vacuum, that makes sense. But in the midst of genuine shortage of healthcare professionals, it's myopic foolishness. And I'd guess your comment about the lasting effect of actual recovery is going to turn out to be very wrong and already contradicts most everything I've seen recently regarding the immune response to reinfection after Covid recovery. edit: Here are a few links that contradict your statement that immunity doesn't last very long: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting-immunity-found-after-recovery-covid-19 https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting... https://www.futurity.org/covid-19-survivors-immunity-viruses-2602672/ https://www.futurity.org/covid-19-survivors-immunity-viruses...
    - tandymodel100 5y ago
      In all honesty I don't want people uneducated or conspiracy-minded enough to not take the vaccine treating me anyway even in a shortage situation.
      - trentnix 5y ago
        Let them eat cake!
      - claytongulick 5y ago
        You don't want people who have medical degrees and are experts in their field treating you? Because you have a better understanding of this than they do? That seems like a strange position to take. I would take a different position, like "what do these highly qualified health care workers understand that I don't?"
        belltaco 5y ago
        What percentage of doctors are unvaccinated? Or is there atleast a number or some reporting on doctors getting fired for refusing vaccinations? >I would take a different position, like "what do these highly qualified health care workers understand that I don't?" Examples?
- gspr 5y ago
  Those doctors and nurses are little more than saboteurs. Would you hire someone who would willingly increases their own risk of being unable to work by orders of magnitude for no actual gain? Note that this is not like not hiring someone who likes to go mountain biking and therefore are more likely to hurt themselves and not work. Hobbies like that have real benefits. Vaccine denial not.
enchiridion 5y ago
How about scale up the hospitals, or at least covid capacity in a meaningful way. How long does they public have to bear burden of insufficient health infra. EDIT: Sorry that might have come off a bit blunt. But the entire pandemic response has been frustratingly insufficient in my opinion. A variant like Omicron was long predicted and expected. How are we not prepared with a plan to end lockdowns? And blaming unvaccinated or anti-maskers is not a good answer. Modeling of acceptance should’ve been done. It’s not like these contrarian sentiments were surprising either. All together it feels like this response to omicron is a public health failure.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  The US is a public health failure. We didn’t want “socialized” medicine. So we got what we wanted, the best nurses are making $300/hr in COVID hotspots and leaving new grads and understaffed facilities in their wake.
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    Feel free to name the country that isn't experiencing the exact same issues regarding COVID hotspots and understaffed facilities, "socialized medicine" or not.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      Japan, Israel, South Korea, New Zealand come to mind. Honestly, it’s not very hard… the US went from the respected world leader to a public health carnival sideshow overnight. CDC is taking cues from places like South Africa and Israel now. It’s pathetic.
  - enchiridion 5y ago
    This is not a productive viewpoint, it’s defeatist. How would socialized medicine help in this specific case? More power to the government? The government already has plenty of power to influence outcomes through spending. However, that power has been applied poorly. We need mass repeal of old government regulations and the appointing of technocrats (as in people concerned with low level details of regulations). Additionally we need new highly adversarial independent regulatory bodies to prevent capitalistic interests from causing market collapse. The current agencies are too in bed with industry, and it’s not beneficial to the public. Giving more power to the current government systems which rolled out this poor response seems like the wrong answer.
anm89 5y ago
As many others below have pointed out, there are a variety of reasons why this narrative is extremely flimsy. All ends do not justify all means, especially when the proven correlation between the ends and the means is often lacking or doesn't support the use of the means at all.
roenxi 5y ago
It has been nearly 2 years. Have they considered training a few people to handle respiratory diseases and bulking up the hospitals? Nursing is hard and takes years of training, but 2 years would have been long enough to teach people how to manage the average case of 1 disease. There have been a lot of people sitting around doing not much, they could probably use the work.
- ThalesX 5y ago
  There is also the argument for encouraging people to lead a healthier lifestyle. Even though it’s political suicide to tell people that they need to get in shape, two years of a push from the government would have had enough time to make a great impact on overall population health.

physicsgraph 5y ago

What are your thoughts on the hospitalization of infected people? Hospitals are at capacity or overflowing.

anamax 5y ago
If you're not running your hospital near capacity, you're losing money.
- slenk 5y ago
  Yeah but you usually don't want every ER _and_ ICU bed full
_dain_ 5y ago
not in England they aren't
- austinjp 5y ago
  Ehm.... If there not exactly at capacity, the trend isn't looking great. https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/ https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas...
  - midasuni 5y ago
    What we don’t have easy pubic access too is a breakdown of 1) total hospital admissions (not just those with covid but those without) and how that compares to a normal winter. If 4% of the country test positive for covid at the moment and 4% of hospital admissions have covid, that’s to be expected for example 2) age of those being admitted compared with covid by age 4) vaccination of those being admitted There’s a chance that the Hugh number of cases is in those who are young and vaccinated and less likely to need hospitalisation, and we’ll soon reach peak transmission and cases will drop come January without it overwhelming hospitals. There’s also a chance that it will spread to more vulnerable people, especially once school returns next week and grandparents start babysitting again, and hospitalisations will shoot up about 3rd/4th week in January as it spreads throughout the over 60s. It’s not just a matter of dividing infections by hospitalisations a week later, getting a number, and plugging it in to calculate capacity. Not is it a matter of comparing those going into hospital with covid with last year, as more cases means fewer people going in without covid.

machinelearning 5y ago

Why do you feel like you have to qualify your comment by disclosing your vaccination status? Surely that shouldn’t dictate whether you’re allowed to express your thoughts on a subject or the factual accuracy of your statements.

mayregretit 5y ago
I found the disclosure helpful because I had assumed they were one of those vocal antivaxxers.
anm89 5y ago
Because people like to group everyone in to camps so if I say anything remotely dismissive of an official covid narrative, I'm probably just some anti science, anti vaxxer, whose opinion isn't worth listening too (according to them). So at a minimum, dismiss me if you want, but not because I'm in the evil other camp, because I'm not.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  Or perhaps because people should not be divided into the two extremes of antivax conspiracy theorists and infinite lockdown aficionados. That’s just a convenient fallacy to dismiss criticism.
wreath 5y ago
I agree.. but unfortunately nowadays we shove people who refuse or are skeptical about COVID vaccine in the "anti-vaxxer" basket so people have to clarify that