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More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’

• crooked-v 5y ago
  I have to wonder how much of this comes down to a complete loss of empathy and patience with the willingly unvaxxed.
  • omosubi 5y ago
    Why would you have empathy for them? They have fought the vaccines for close to a year now and if they haven't gotten it they probably have a pretty good reason. Shouldn't the vaccine protect vaxxed people from everyone?? I seriously do not understand vaxxed people who care about other people's vaccination status, especially when those people aren't their elderly friends and family.
    • egypturnash 5y ago
  • chronofar 5y ago
    I don’t think you need to lack empathy or patience to desire a return to normalcy with an understanding that if someone decides not to protect themselves they may experience negative consequences. We all have our choices and risk tolerances, people can make their decision and move on with their lives. I don’t stay off roads just because some people might not be wearing seatbelts.
• theHIDninja 5y ago
• mrkramer 5y ago
  >This year, COVID is on pace to kill more than 300,000 unvaccinated people who would, quite likely, avoid death by getting two or three shots. For the record vaccinated people die too.
  • notquitehuman 5y ago
    What’s the case fatality rate for vaccinated vs. unvaccinated people?
    • mrkramer 5y ago
      You tell me.
• torstenvl 5y ago
  I think it boils down to two questions: - What is the average level of risk to someone taking reasonable personal precautions? - What level of state-sponsored violence is justifiable to further reduce that risk? Governments and societies have been acting out-of-control and it needs to stop. If people don't want to take personal precautions, they should be at liberty to assume the additional risk.
  • dragontamer 5y ago
    > - What is the average level of risk to someone taking reasonable personal precautions? Depends on how full hospitals get. We all get into accidents. We fall and hit our heads, we might get a heart attack, a pregnancy might suddenly go bad and a C-section (or worse surgery) is needed. As COVID19 fills up hospitals around the country, the risk isn't from Omicron itself anymore, as much as it is from an overburdened health care system. -------- The big example was the Montana train derailment last summer. It was difficult (but possible) to get all of the injured to an appropriate hospital, many being forced to go to hospitals hours away because the nearby hospitals were full of COVID19 patients. But this new wave of Omicron is even worse than the summer of 2021 by any measurement. > - What level of state-sponsored violence is justifiable to further reduce that risk? While the health care system of the USA is technically a free market, with a mix of for-profit hospitals (and charity / religious hospitals, and a few state-sponsored ones for groups like veterans)... people expect hospitals / health care systems to be functional. Since the state is ultimately responsible for the health care of its local population (whether they want to be responsible or not), its important to take actions needed to keep our hospital open. The state will pull in the national guard, they will call in Navy hospital ships, they will declare emergencies to help. From that perspective, asking everyone else to get vaccinated or booster-vaccinated is just more of the same, its another action to minimize hospitalizations. Forced vaccinations are far more effective than national guard in this situation. > Governments and societies have been acting out-of-control and it needs to stop. I know someone who went to work while testing positive for COVID19. The amount of apathy and callousness the "individual" has in this situation knows no bounds. "Individualism" is now selfishness. Its more important to save a few hours of PTO / leave rather than protect your fellow customers or coworkers from the disease. People have lost their goddamn minds over this. They ignore the hospitalization stats, they ignore the overflowing morgues. They focus on selfish self-centered action rather than community.
• _xnmw 5y ago
  The risk is now "priced in" to our consciousness. Back when it first started, covid was a big scary unknown risk to take for simply going outside and interacting with people. Now, it's a well-known risk, and people are willing to take that risk, along with other well-known risks for going outside, like the risk of getting into a car accident or slipping and falling.
  • SerLava 5y ago
    Yes it's sort of like the alarming scourge of preventable automotive deaths, except that it's over 10 times worse. Also like slipping and falling, but about 20 times worse.
    • vernie 5y ago
      Okay?
    • DevKoala 5y ago
      In the USA, there are 4.4 million traffic accident injuries that require medical attention per year. I don’t know where you are getting the 10 times worse from.
      • xboxnolifes 5y ago
        USA automotive death are <40k per year. USA covid deaths are ~400k a year
        • DevKoala 5y ago
          I am confident permanent paralysis is up there if not worse than long COVID. My argument is that you cannot just put a blanket statement of which one is worse by looking at a single metric. Also, people are still performing a calculated risk, wether the risk is greater or smaller.
          • SerLava 5y ago
• denimnerd42 5y ago
  i think i'm done with current level vaccines. I've had 3 mrna. The second and third each took me out for 2 days. I don't see any reason for more unless a better one comes out. I do think 3 are important though.
  • cblconfederate 5y ago
    Why do you think 3 is enough but not 4. That's not rational, its just psychologically comforting
    • denimnerd42 5y ago
      the reasoning is 3 provides robust long term immunity due to the several month gap between 2 and 3. While 4 won't add much benefit except to boost antibody count for a short while.
      • cblconfederate 5y ago
        so just like 3
  • VeninVidiaVicii 5y ago
    For all vaccines, neutralizing antibody titers decrease over time. This is why boosters exist in the first place.
    • denimnerd42 5y ago
      From what I've seen so far the antibodies don't really last long enough. I'll rely on long term t-cell protection. At least that's what I think so far.
    • jaywalk 5y ago
      No vaccine has ever had an efficacy dropoff as steep and rapid as the current crop of Covid vaccines.
• EMM_386 5y ago
  I'm double vaxxed and boosted and just spent 4 days in the hospital with Covid. I actually entered the hospital without Covid and got it while I was in there. They had the entire place divided into separate wings and I had to be transferred between them. 103 degree fever, pulse 130, was pretty awful but came out of it fine. I, too, am done with all of it. Let the chips fall where they may now.
  • peregren 5y ago
    The vaccine may have kept you out of ICU. It doesn't seem logical to change to a "let the chips fall where they may" based on this experience.
    • dekhn 5y ago
      at this point I want better public health evidence from CDC etc that "the vaccine may have kept you out of the ICU". I need better quantification of the various risks before continuing to live an extremely inconvenient lifestyle to ostensibly save other's lives.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • ceejayoz 5y ago
        This information is very easy to find. See the first chart here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/past-reports/10222021.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidvi... There's a clear difference in hospitalization and death between the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. You don't have to take the CDC's word for it - other countries can see the same thing in their numbers. Calling getting the vaccine "an extremely inconvenient lifestyle" is silly.
        • dekhn 5y ago
          At this point I don't really think that pointing at CDC public health releases is going to convince a scientist like me. Also, the data you pointed at doesn't directly answer what I said (nearly all data is ambiguous, there are a ton of confounders, etc). Getting a vaccine isnt inconvenient, except that it was: I spent an entire week unable to use my left arm and feeling very sick (and my doctor didn't care). But also there's a ton of other issues, like my kids not being able to go to school, stores closed, having to greatly limit travel, etc.
• kerneloftruth 5y ago
  "For more than a year, I did everything that public-health authorities told me to do. I wore masks. I canceled vacations. I made sacrifices. I got vaccinated. I got boosted. I’m happy to get boosted again. But this virus doesn’t stop. Year over year, the infections don’t decrease. Instead, virulence for people like me is decreasing, either because the virus is changing, or because of growing population immunity, or both. Americans should stop pointlessly guilting themselves about all these cases." Yes, indeed. It's time for people to resume critical thinking regarding this, and not be guided by "lizard brain" level fear responses. The virus has evolved, we've learned more, we know who to protect the most -- time to adapt.
  • JPKab 5y ago
    Agreed. There is also this weird fixation on being the single person who will infect another who for whatever reason is at high risk either due to obesity, not being vaccinated despite being in a high-risk group, etc. As if you're very presence in some public location is going to be the only way another person encounters the virus. It's just not realistic. Every single person will eventually catch a cold just like every single person will eventually catch the omicron variant or whatever one surfaces next. This fixation that we, or the government, is capable of isolating human beings in a manner to prevent them from ever being exposed to an endemic virus is utterly absurd.
• smm11 5y ago
  • tombert 5y ago
    Does a comment like this actually contribute to anything? I don't want to be mean, but this is a comment that would probably be more appropriate on Reddit or 4chan. That said, a fatalistic viewpoint is valid enough philosophy, but I am still in the camp of "even if I don't like them very much, the unvaccinated are still humans and we should still try and minimize how many of them get sick." NOTE: I'm vaccinated and boosted, and wouldn't have a problem getting another booster if the WHO or CDC recommends it.
    • dekhn 5y ago
      It's not a fatalistic viewpoint and it does contribute. This disease will always be with us and the sooner we find a way to return to semi-normalcy rahter than osciallting around every time a new variant with different properties shows up, the better.
      • tombert 5y ago
        > it does contribute. It really didn't. It reads like something I'd see in a JPG compressed meme you'd see on /r/forwardsFromGrandma. Are you saying that we shouldn't do anything if we see a new variant? > This disease will always be with us That sounds fatalistic to me, at least with the more colloquial use of the word. To be clear, I don't necessarily think you're wrong. It's a valid viewpoint, and I think it's not unreasonable to say "the sooner we find a way to return to semi-normalcy rahter than osciallting around every time a new variant with different properties shows up, the better."
        • dekhn 5y ago
          It contributes in the sense that we comment here to manipulate the opinions of others, and at this point, the best and most important message to communicate is "this isn't going away no matter how much we science it, so we better start planning for the endemic nature". As for fatalism about a virus- I grew up during HIV/AIDS. It's still here (I went into biology and got a PhD and almost became a professor to work on anti-HIV drugs). Is it fatalistic for us to assume HIV will be with us even though we know how to completely abolish transmission, but people still do things that lead to transmission? best to be realistic about the future and plan for it than hope vaccines are going to magically solve problems for us.
• wing-_-nuts 5y ago
  I'm fully vax'd and boosted. I'll probably continue to get boosted in the future. All that said? I feel like the government did a really bad job communicating who needs the booster and when. First, they gave vague recommendations to immunocompromised folks. They said everyone else probably didn't need it. Then they said well, ok for older folks. Then this new omni variant comes out and they're badgering everyone to get boosted NOW or your no longer considered fully vaccinated. There would have been so much less confusion if they were consistent with their communication from the start, and did a phased rollout of the booster just like they did with the original vaccine. Edit: My point is that they knew there was reduced efficacy of the vaccine back in September. They knew the general public would eventually need a vaccine. They should have had a plan to gradually get the population boosted. If they had, most who wanted a booster would have had one before omni existed.
  • sophacles 5y ago
    So what you're saying is the government should have predicted the future perfectly, and given Post-Omicron guidelines months before it emerged?
    • deltarholamda 5y ago
      The government said, at first, that nobody needed to go out and buy masks, because they won't do any good. And then the government said you had to wear a mask or you couldn't enter into buildings. Now, the reasoning for the former was that they were concerned about PPE supplies, but that doesn't change the fact they reversed themselves very shortly, and expected people to forget the earlier messaging. The government didn't need to be an oracle with a perfect track record, but I don't think it's outrageous to suggest that they should have been honest. If you can't see how the pandemic was used for political purposes, I don't know what to say.
      • thakoppno 5y ago
        > “The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.” It seems to me from this excerpt of his email to a colleague on February 5, 2020, Fauci really did not think masks were effective initially.
• drewg123 5y ago
  I think a lot of this depends on the typical severity of Omicron (and future variants). I'm vaccinated and boosted. I wear a mask in public. I don't go out much. I do travel fairly regularly (fly maybe 1-2x per month). I finally got Covid last week, likely on a flight. I had ~3 days of mild cold-like symptoms (sore throat, runny nose, congestion, very low grade fever that approached 101F). It was far less severe than any flu I've ever had. I extended my trip by a week to meet how I read the CDC guidelines (which are clear as mud for mildy symptomatic cases). If the severity for everyone was that mild, then I'd say we're done. However, I worry about the unvaccinated and the unboosted. I wish there was better data on the severity of Omicron for different categories of people.
  • ashtonkem 5y ago
    I personally worry about the availability of medical services due to attrition among medical staff and ICU load due to the unvaccinated. I also have taken precautions, but I can’t guarantee that I won’t get into a car crash or suffer a random medical incident requiring urgent care.
    • drewg123 5y ago
      Yes, attrition of hospital staff is terrible. I was hospitalized last fall for a non-covid issue, and a volunteer came into the room who was a retired nurse. She told me that the current patient loads for nurses are about 2x what they were pre-covid. I checked on the nurses salaries (via job ads), and they honestly did not seem terrible competitive.
  • jmole 5y ago
    Exactly - Delta had a reputation for being both prolific and extremely virulent. Long COVID, loss of smell & taste, heart and lung problems, etc. A terrible illness. Omicron seems to carry far fewer of those risks from what data we have, especially if you are vaccinated.
    • yellowapple 5y ago
      My hope is that we're approaching a similar point the Spanish Flu did after this amount of time: Spanish Flu eventually lost its lethality and became symptomatically indistinguishable from your run of the mill flu, and hopefully COVID will eventually do the same and be symptomatically indistinguishable from your run of the mill cold. Obviously we ain't there quite yet, but with Omicron being both wider-spreading and more mild, hopefully we'll get there soon.
• Spartan-S63 5y ago
  I think the message of "vaxxed and done" is the right way for us to be moving, but I think it's incomplete. To get vaxxed insulates you from the risk of severe disease. It reduces the risk to the point that going out and living life is an acceptable risk, just like any other. However, it doesn't protect you from infecting others. To that end, I think that indoor mask mandates continue to be justifiable and should continue until we either evolve a COVID-19 variant weak enough that moderate disease isn't disruptive, or it fades away. In order for us to continue to have freedom, it requires collective sacrifice. We have seen a large swath of the US population unwilling to make relatively simple sacrifices to ensure that we have freedom of mobility. This is disappointing to see.
  • mattnewton 5y ago
    I would agree with this but add continuous testing to the mix, and actually quarantining if you have a positive test but no symptoms. It seems like the most reasonable comprimise between the individual desire to return to normal. Unfortunately this is a large individual responsibility, both in behavior and in the costs of getting enough tests. PCR tests are mostly impractical for continuous testing while going out and about becuase of the large time lag between testing and results, made worse by spiking demand and limited lab capacity, and buying rapid tests can add up as a real cost to the average family.
    • Spartan-S63 5y ago
      I agree with the continuous testing requirement, too. I’m lucky enough to live in Colorado with an at-home test kit program. I’ve been able to regularly test about once a week, or more frequently if I have clinical symptoms. We need a program like that on a national scale. I know countries like the UK are doing really well with at-home testing programs, but here in the US, we’re still experiencing both PCR and rapid test shortages. We shouldn’t be seeing this so far into a pandemic. Fully agree on the individual responsibility to quarantine regardless of clinical symptoms, too. There’s been a huge failing, this entire pandemic, at the individual level. It’s why the lockdowns were marginally effective — folks didn’t stay at home like they were asked to. It’s another symptom of a lack of collective sacrifice for the greater good.
• newaccount2021 5y ago
• newsclues 5y ago
  Poor communication, made up for with intense marketing push via all channels. Lies and miscommunication, over public health policy, without transparency and openness. Silencing criticism, rather than open discussion. I’m surprised more people are continuing to follow along.
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  I wonder if sociologists can explain the americans obsession with politics in everything. This is not normal, there seems to be something exceptional about how it is normalized to discuss natural phenomena with political lingo
  • kristjansson 5y ago
    Because anything with two sides can be advantageously leveraged if it correlates with political alignment. An apolitical question is an opportunity to create and align a political question.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• Mikeb85 5y ago
  I'm vaxxed and mostly done. Already contracted Covid, have 2 vaccines, I'm down to get a booster every year or two, at my own leisure. Having vaccines mandated every 6 months is not something I'm OK with and to be honest, it feels a lot like the government trying to deflect from the fact healthcare isn't OK (at least in my home country, Canada). There's always been risks to life and this feels more like governments are trying to convince people the risk should be zero so they can be the heroes while at the same time expanding their powers...
  • he0001 5y ago
    How deadly does a disease have to be for you to feel it’s not worth the risk? 1%, 10%, 50%?
    • Mikeb85 5y ago
      Depends how virulent. SARS, Ebola and others have come and gone. I've lost 3 people to cancer this pandemic. Been to 20+ funerals in my life and I'm barely over 30. Never lost anyone to any transmissible disease.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • dham 5y ago
      Are you asking because you work in a gain of function lab :D? It's going to be hard for a virus to come from nature that can spread like the Flu and be as deadly as Ebola. The biggest societal threat besides a meteor or nuclear war is gain of function.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • umvi 5y ago
        > The biggest societal threat besides a meteor or nuclear war is gain of function. Nah, internal conflict is a bigger threat than even a meteor or nuclear war. A civil war happened once in the US, it could happen again. If not a civil war, a complete governmental collapse. All you have to do is keep polarizing and polarizing the sides to further and further extremes and eventually reap the consequences when the government collapses.
• fallingknife 5y ago
  Covid is now endemic. I have yet to see any expert analysis to contradict this. Endemic means that your probability of catching the virus eventually is 1. Covid restrictions at this point are a joke. I'm vaxxed and done.
• kmonad 5y ago
  Every viral replication is an event that could yield a new variant. A new variant can lead to new problems. It is therefore of interest to limit viral replications. This, in addition to the health care system capacities, are crucial targets to address. Fortunately, vaccines can improve both targets due to the reduced (though now less effectively so) infection rates, shorter infection periods, etc. This makes me personally hopeful that Omicron will become the final "pre-endemic" variant. However, while I too feel tired and sympathize with the described "vaxxed and done" mentality, I know we must stay vigilant and continue to reduce opportunities for this virus to find new ways to remain a pan- rather than an endemic. Acceptable costs of this vigilance, and the nature of it, i.e. the measures we take, need to be updated just as everything else.
  • ya_throw 5y ago
    How can you simultaneously say that Covid will become endemic, and also that we need to try to control its mutation rate? Ongoing mutation is a fact of (viral) life.
    • kmonad 5y ago
      I do not understand your question in the first sentence, sorry. And I agree with your second sentence.
• wkd415 5y ago
  Next topic please.
• smachiz 5y ago
  I don't get it. It takes 10 minutes to get a booster. It's such a non-event.
  • xeromal 5y ago
    Plenty of people who get the booster have a low grade fever and sickness for a day or two.
    • NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
      Friend of mine had a week long migraine and felt like she had the flu for the first 48 hours.
  • turrican 5y ago
    If you are one of the lucky few that doesn’t get unpleasant side effects for 24-48 hours afterwords, this may be true. I am not, and anecdotally nobody close to me is either. It’s not a pleasant experience that I want to repeat ad infinitum. Particularly if it’s not even going to stop the current C19 variation.
    • zzbzq 5y ago
      Have you tried just taking a Tylenol?
      • CountDrewku 5y ago
        You're not supposed to be taking anything that affects your immune system like that when you get the vaccine. They literally tell you that. Stop handing out medical advice that's wrong.
  • lovecg 5y ago
    10 minutes to get it, anywhere from 0 days to a week to get over the side effects. Source: personal experience. If the calculation changes from “one and done” to “do this every few months on a schedule”, I’m leaning towards taking my chances with the virus. I’ll reconsider if there’s a newer, broad spectrum vaccine available though.
• pxue 5y ago
  Ahh. it begins. - US midterm is coming up in november. - One of Biden's major election point was combating Covid and curbing infections. - This has largely been a catastrophic failure. More Americans have died from Covid under Biden than under Trump (not that it matters) So, the left media will now begin a year long campaign down playing domestic covid severity, and make sure that Covid will NOT be a major talking point for the 2022 elections. Edit: republican will 100% pull a "i-told-you-so" move in their campaign trails. I'm Canadian and our government (even conservative learning province/state government) is still using the partial lockdown as a mean to curb infection, it's very very obviously NOT working. What will be really interesting is just how the medical community is so detached from the political community. I understand you shouldn't bring politics into science, but you also can't blind yourself and optimize for only one metric.. everything is a trade-off.
  • whistlecrackers 5y ago
  • cblconfederate 5y ago
    I was fooled for a bit thinking that people might be coming to their rational senses, but it does seem there is a media campaign to minimize covid.
  • cableshaft 5y ago
    > This has largely been a catastrophic failure. More Americans have died from Covid under Biden than under Trump (not that it matters) True, but Trump only dealt with Covid for about 9 months at most, and that was starting from 0 cases in February, meanwhile Biden has dealt with it for 13 months at this point, and also took office in the middle of the major winter wave, and then the Delta wave in mid 2021, and now the Omicron wave at the end of 2021, which were much more infectious and mostly affected those that could not or refused to be vaccinated (once vaccines were widely available in April at least). Biden didn't create those waves, by the way. This is a global problem, and judging by how the US got the variant spikes after most of the rest of the world did, likely didn't originate here. He could have been like China or Australia and enforced hard indefinite lockdowns, but it was clear after the one Trump agreed to a partial two-week lockdown that the US public wouldn't even comply to that, so good luck Biden imposing any future lockdowns. Yes, the majority of people were vaccinated in 2021, but I'd argue a good chunk of those same people (waves hi) were self-isolating as much as possible until they got vaccinated anyway and were much less likely to be included in the deaths of 2020 anyway. Biden definitely could have done a better job managing Covid (ordered increased home tests made and ship them to citizens before Omicron became a thing, for one idea), but there's a good amount of the population that wouldn't have listened to him no matter what measures he tried to push. I also disagree with you that Democrats are going to downplay covid (the media might, but it sounds like it's just to force people to go back to work and kids to stay in school because they're too afraid of the economy getting worse). About the only thing Biden can point to as something good he's done, is the vaccine rollout, so if they downplay it they don't have much to go on. But I agree it won't matter in the long run because the Democrats are going to lose the midterms, big time, and probably the presidency in 2024.
• titzer 5y ago
  I've gone through cycles with this. Mostly I am done arguing. I hate arguing about this. It's just more of the culture war shit that so many different media sources love pushing to keep people amped up. I double vaxxed and boosted. Stopped wearing a mask for the most part, but with Omicron I started wearing a mask again because I just don't want this stupid virus. I'm healthy and would probably not have a symptomatic infection. But I still don't want this stupid virus, and I don't want to spread it. I think for 2022 I am going to try to argue less, and focus more on my areas of personal expertise. I've done a lot of arguing and feel like I'm generally worse off for it.
  • fourstar 5y ago
    • glogla 5y ago
      I especially like the bottom right corner that says THE JEWS are all doing it. /s
      • fourstar 5y ago
        • glogla 5y ago
          > Disprove it, then. > Which families own the press? Or is it verboten? It is not verboten, it is dumb. Putting a large trend on religious/ethnic group of millions of people is just nonsensical. Do you really think millions of "jews", from gas station attendants to doctors to CEOs are somehow collaborating on pushing media a certain way? If bunch of dudes are colluding on shaping the public discourse from wealth inequality to something else, is it more likely it is because of their ethnicity or because they are on the "winning" side of the wealth inequality divide? Musing: Though considering the complaints about "they are now writing about systemic racism instead", it seems like very left-wing message (wealth inequality) packaged for hardcore right-wing people, so I guess complaining about "the jews" makes sense.
• khazhoux 5y ago
  As a side note, I want to thank dang for allowing these threads to stay up, even though they get a bit political and contentious at times. This is the only place I have to talk about COVID issues with smart people that I respect.
  • amatecha 5y ago
    Agreed... I may not agree with what everyone says but I like how [generally] civil the communication is, in stark contrast with, well, nearly anywhere else :)
  • Nemrod67 5y ago
    hear hear, HN is one of the rare places where the Culture War is still fought in a relatively chivalrous manner. Maybe this is the place where the Future is born? The Culture War is a philosophical one, and only philosophy could stop it.
• pradn 5y ago
  I've vaxxed and boosted and will continue to get boosted as often as is recommended. I follow the local regulations, which in NYC mainly involve masking up and showing a vax proof for indoor activities like dining, concerts, and riding the NYC subway. I'm not stopping my life though. I've travelled internationally in the past few months, both to see family and sight-see. Seems like not a bad compromise. The one thing I don't as much is masking up outdoors, which is more common now in NYC than it was a month ago. I'd say 70% of people are doing that in Lower Manhattan.
  • JSavageOne 5y ago
    COVID doesn't transmit well outside, people who wear masks outside are either paranoid, uneducated, or virtue signaling.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • phillc73 5y ago
      That comment resembles the Austrian government: https://www.thelocal.at/20220107/explained-what-do-we-know-about-austrias-new-rule-for-masks-outdoors/ https://www.thelocal.at/20220107/explained-what-do-we-know-a...
  • School-Cotton 5y ago
    You don’t have to have proof of vaccination to ride the subway.
    • pradn 5y ago
      Yes, you're right.
• vmception 5y ago
  Great article! Just a week or two ago on this forum there were people willing to treat me like a far right conservative or a general anti-vaxxer from the facebook troll factory, just because I didn't like a private institution’s booster mandate. That was fascinating.
  • 01100011 5y ago
    Welcome to the internet. Some of it stems from exhaustion. People sense any sort of deviation from the official dogma and they assume you're another idiot who they'll end up arguing with. It's sad. There is a lot of nuance to many of our cherished positions and discussion strengthens the truth but many people just get offended by genuine curiosity.
    • valachio 5y ago
      I remember in the early days of the Internet, people were saying how the Internet would encourage critical discussions and open fruitful debates. Now I think the Internet actually enforces groupthink and eradicates opposing narratives. Platforms like Twitter allows people to dox those with unorthodox ideas and behaviors and cancel them, which is basically a modern day version of "burnt at the stake". It seems that the Internet also ended up give an even more effective podium for authoritarian regimes to push their narrative, best example of this being the Chinese government. At the root of all this is human nature. Perhaps technology won't help humanity transcend, but it will only reinforce what's already there. I have to give Hacker News a thumbs up here. I think Hacker News is much better than a place like Reddit for open-minded discussions. Reddit has become a place where subreddit are often times moderated by a group of mods who act like a single-party state.
      • fullshark 5y ago
        It's now very easy to find someone across the planet that agrees you on 99.9% of things and talk to them instead of have that conversation with your neighbor who only agrees with you on 80% of things and might actually challenge your thinking face to face.
  • 5y ago
• wonderwonder 5y ago
  I am one of those, triple vaxxed and done. CDC has now said that the majority of those that died had 4+ co-morbidities. They have also indicated that getting vaccinated does not reduce your ability to spread the virus. So if that is the case, there is no longer a real need to vilify the unvaxxed. CDC statement appears to indicate that the primary reason for people dying is poor physical health prior to infection. With that said I do think vaccines likely reduce the severity of the infection but I don't buy all these people saying they would have died if not for the vaccine, how do they know? This has motivated me to start working out again and to try and lose weight. Going to make sure my kids are physically active now as well. Omicron is essentially impossible to avoid at this point short of locking yourself in a room and having everything delivered to your front door. The risks are known and its time to trust people to weigh those risks and make their own decisions. I think the issue now is a political one. The democratic party has hung their hat on how bad covid is and how important it is to get vaccinated and to state at this point, NVM lets just get back to normal would be a loss of face. Instead of just saying that the virus has evolved and is less lethal now they have continued to double down on the vaccine mandate which I don't agree with. I am a democrat so I am not coming at this as a republican. I am not downplaying the severity of the virus but at this point it is here to stay. Even if we locked down for 3 months, once we were released someone from another country would come in and re-infect everyone again. Also during lock down do we once again tell the poorest among us that while they are 'essential' that they are also worth less and must continue to work and face the risk alone so as to ensure the rest of us can isolate in safety at home. Edit: I said "does not reduce your ability to spread the virus" I meant to say "does not remove". My fault.
  • vkou 5y ago
    > Instead of just saying that the virus has evolved and is less lethal now they have continued to double down on the vaccine mandate which I don't agree with. What makes you say with any degree of confidence that the virus is less lethal now? The data's not in yet. At this point, it's all magical thinking.
    • wonderwonder 5y ago
      https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/all-indications-suggest-omicrons-milder-than-delta-fauci-says-but-dont-get-complacent/ https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/all-indications-suggest-...
• jpm_sd 5y ago
  I wish I could feel "vaxxed and done". My whole extended family is vaccinated and everyone who's old enough is boostered. But I have three children in elementary and middle school. Like school systems across the country, ours is in chaos due to COVID absenteeism. Roughly 1/3 of the students and 1/4 of the teachers are currently out sick due to positive tests, some symptomatic, some not, and the numbers keep going up every day. Just waiting for our turn and then the kids have to stay home for two weeks! Hopefully February will be easier?
  • __blockcipher__ 5y ago
    This is an artifact of the refusal to admit that SARS-2 is an endemic respiratory virus. If you have to isolate whenever you encounter a possible COVID exposure, it will always be untenable to be able to actually function as a society. We need to go back to the way it always was in pre-COVID times: you stay home when you're sick, but you don't drop everything and stop the world if a friend of yours gets the flu, or adenovirus, or any of the other 4 circulating hCoVs, etc
  • Miner49er 5y ago
    2 weeks? Didn't the CDC change it to 5 days?
    • jpm_sd 5y ago
      My mistake, the requirement is currently 10 days, not 2 weeks. But it's up to the school district, things don't change overnight just because the CDC changed their recommendations.
  • hcrisp 5y ago
    Nit: "Boostered" is not a word. "Boosted" is [0]. This is similar to when I hear people say "orientate" instead of simply "orient". We don't need to over-Latinize when simpler speech will do. [0] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/boosted https://www.thefreedictionary.com/boosted
• afavour 5y ago
  I'm vaxxed. I'm boosted. I'd very much like to be done. But my children cannot be vaccinated. As a parent of a young kid it kind of feels like everyone has just moved on. I know folks in here will tell me that statistically speaking my children are unlikely to be hospitalized and so on, and I agree. But I know enough kids who got COVID and suffered the symptoms (e.g. a months-long scratchy cough) that I'm not going to stop worrying about it. We're still very unclear on the long-term effects of COVID, after all. Couple that to daycare/preschool shutdowns: if there's a case in the class we've got to keep our kids at home for a week. We both work. We can deal with it, lord knows we've had to do it enough times already, but it's absolutely draining. And the stress of waiting/expecting the phone call from the school is always there, particularly in this Omicron phase where it feels like everyone and their dog is contracting it. And this comes from two parents that work from home. We're the luckiest of the lot! Pfizer has already announced their trial with under 5s was not successful and they'll have to restart. Moderna was supposed to close out a trial in late November but instead expanded it to hundreds of new participants. Why? Unclear. Last I saw no-one seems to be covering it in detail. Out of sight, out of mind.
  • joelbondurant1 5y ago
  • ya_throw 5y ago
    Are you saying that until young kids can get vaccinated, it is not safe enough to remove shutdown protocols for preschools? Parent of 2 very young kids here btw - it's been brutal, I feel your pain. Frankly, our kids get enough other diseases from nursery that a months-long scratchy cough doesn't sound too terrifying.
    • afavour 5y ago
      > Are you saying that until young kids can get vaccinated, it is not safe enough to remove shutdown protocols for preschools? I have no idea. I'm not an expert. And no experts seem to be talking. Our preschool recently switched from a 14 day shutdown to 7 day plus negative PCR test to re-enter. At least there's that? > Frankly, our kids get enough other diseases from nursery that a months-long scratchy cough doesn't sound too terrifying. We'll have to agree to disagree there. My kids have never had anything that's lasted for months, the kid I know with the cough was waking up in the middle of the night coughing most nights. No thank you.
• snowwrestler 5y ago
  I feel like COVID has become like a marshmallow test for adults, where those who can manage their emotions and make rational decisions can set themselves up for greater long-term rewards. It looked for a while there like this could be a thing that gets “done”—that we would get a good vaccine into enough people, then incidence would decline so far it just goes away. That didn’t happen. We’re stuck with it for a foreseeable future. Well, one can cry for the world that was, or one can get up and live in the world that is. We’re not going to be done with vaccines and mandates. And that does not have to be a big deal. I have had to prove vaccination status of my kid for schools and camps for years. It’s annoying but not any harder than keeping my car registration up to date or any other minor bureaucratic headache. I know someone who almost quit a great job because they were mad about a vaccine mandate from their employer. They were going to give up a good salary, great benefits, and a stable career because they were “so over COVID.” That is what failing the marshmallow test looks like.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • claytongulick 5y ago
    It's interesting that you phrase it that way, because I was thinking exactly the same thing, but from the opposite direction. I caught covid early, and while (for me) it was a nasty bug, I recovered with nothing more than a lingering cough for several weeks. Against enormous pressure I decided not to get vaccinated. Everything I read supported that natural immunity is at least as protective as the vaccine, and most studies I've seen say it is much better. This makes sense to me, a natural immune response in a healthy person should be stronger than a vaccine, given that all a vaccine is supposed to do is "train" your immune system via an immune response to a "simulation" of the actual virus (apologies for the gross oversimplification). I thought the marshmallow test was in the other direction - the millions of people who acquired natural immunity through infection, but "grabbed the marshmallow" in the form of the vaccine. What will the long term effects be? We don't know. FWIW, my immunity does seem to have been pretty effective, since I just tested positive for Covid. My only symptoms were a light headache and backache. My wife, however was sick for around three days with fever and sore throat laying right next to me in bed, coughing. I took care of her, kissed her on the forehead, etc... I didn't get as much as a sniffle.
• perardi 5y ago
  This is absolutely me. 1. My personal risk, as someone who is vaccinated, 38, and in decent shape (https://imgur.com/a/gdbBKGK https://imgur.com/a/gdbBKGK), is quite low. (OK, I could lose some holiday weight, fine.) 2. My immediate friend circle is vaccinated…and the vast majority already danced with Omicron already, and came out just fine. 3. I live by myself. So…I am over it. This variant seems to be unbelievably, uncontrollably contagious, and the spread cannot be mitigated without extreme measures. And the people who are at by far, BY FAR the most at-risk are the elderly unvaccinated, who have had ample opportunity to get vaccinated. They will probably be exposed to this virus no matter what I personally do, and probably no matter what anyone does, so why should I substantially alter my life for them, when it will almost certainly change nothing? — And to rant just a bit more: “oh it’s just a mask”. Well, I’m sorry, I have this weird thing where I like to see people’s faces, and see their expressions so that I can get a better idea of their emotional responses. I know. So inhuman of me. (I do wonder if the people who think masks are no big deals have anything resembling social circles…)
  • SixDouble5321 5y ago
    You would think in 38 years a person could learn some body language. Between that and seeing someone's eyes, I have little to no problem reading people's reactions with a mask on. If you are having trouble it may be a personal problem.
• throw8932894 5y ago
  I am vaxxed and done. I was told by doctors and by government officials, that vaccine will make me immune to virus indefinitely, and I do believe that. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar and antivaxxer for me.
• absnetneg 5y ago
  The only thing keeping me from being done is the fear/suspicion that the healthcare system is on the verge of collapse. Front line workers are not being compensated well enough. This means less people taking the career path and increased burn out. We are in for a world of hurt and the only thing I can do is try to not be sick when the hammer falls.
  • AniseAbyss 5y ago
    This is why I got the vaccine. I'm personally not afraid of COVID. But the healthcare system shutting down to the point where we have patients dying in the hallways? That scares me. Too many kids who want to become lawyers or software developers instead of doctors and nurses. With an ageing population that's not good.
• irrational 5y ago
  I'm somewhat concerned by this notion that eventually everyone will get the Omicron variant. I personally do not have any family members, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc. that have gotten any form of Covid (that I know of), much less died. We've all continued to wear masks and social distance and have gotten vaccinated. None of us has even had a little cold in 2 years! I hope that "everyone will eventually get the Omicron variant" is not true.
• 1121redblackgo 5y ago
  Strange thread
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  It's interesting that COVID and vaccines for it are treated so much differently than others. Does the average person on the street know which variants of influenza are currently circulating? Do they have a preference for manufacturer of their influenza vaccine? Do they know what type their influenza vaccine is? Probably not. But suddenly everyone cares deeply about all of these things for COVID. To me it's simple: I ask my doctor what I should do and then I do it.
  • el_benhameen 5y ago
    I get where you’re coming from, but I think that the obvious difference is that regardless of the severity of the current covid variant in vaccinated people, the flu hasn’t upended every bit of life as we know it for a 2+ year period any time in recent memory.
    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
      My point is that there is nothing new that warrants a change in your relationship with your doctor or your approach to medical advice.
  • maxerickson 5y ago
    US recommends everyone get a flu vaccine and we usually only hit about 50%.
• AniseAbyss 5y ago
  I'm not an angry conspiracy theory guy but the government gave me the idea that we could beat corona if we just got everyone vaxxed and follow guidelines. Two years and 3 jabs later it's still SNAFU. At some point you get demoralised. And I know it isn't anyone's fault which somehow makes it worse. The Alex Jones supporters at least have someone to hate.
• eric_b 5y ago
  Yep, this hits the nail on the head. I've got my shots, and now I'm firmly in the "let it rip" camp. Omicron is the endgame as far as I'm concerned. The point of all the onerous COVID rules and vaccine mandates was to prevent the spread, right? Keep pressure on the hospitals down? It didn't work. In the US anyways, COVID is, and has been, everywhere. Masks? Useless. Student/teacher/daycare exclusions for exposure? Useless. Vaccines? I think worthwhile, but in the face of Omicron, also basically useless. More and more people are realizing they will be exposed to COVID during their life. It's not an if, but a when. I knew this the minute it became a pandemic, but others had some idiotic "we can beat this virus" mentality, promulgated mainly by the (left-leaning) media. Well guess what? The only thing that would have made one bit of a difference (besides the vaccines) was bolstering the healthcare system. But the current administration in the US has done nothing of the sort. Time to let it buck, let the cards fall where they may.
• Melatonic 5y ago
  I know everyone is tired of this shit but I just want to remind everyone of one thing: This is the FIRST time humanity has come together and actually come up with a way to beat a virus WHILE a global pandemic is still ongoing. At no other time in history have we even had the option of a solid way to protect ourselves like we do now. I think instead of focusing on how awful the past few years have been this is an important thing to remember - it is truly a turning point in human history and I think we are going to look back at the centuries beforehand and appreciate how far we have come.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • Ekaros 5y ago
    What way to beat the virus? Clearly not vaccines as they aren't that great... Clearly not lockdowns as as soon as we give that up the virus hits... We aren't beating it in anyway... Maybe it is time to accept the reality.
    • rabuse 5y ago
      I've been telling people to "get it, and get over it" since March 2020. The best thing anyone can do is live a healthy lifestyle, and the majority will be fine.
      • jat850 5y ago
        Not to challenge the overall idea too hard, but have you thought about what that really means, to say that? If you extend the IFR of, let's say, 1% to the entire population of (let's pick, for example, the US), would it be acceptable to just let 4,000,000 people die and take no mitigating procedures against that happening? 4 million, my mistake, squeezed an extra zero in there.
        • notch656a 5y ago
          Probably depends on a number of factors. If you're 4 years old and the next year is 20% of your life and you may never have this level of social and intellectual plasticity again, you may be way better off being free to intermingle with people and learn to live life at the expense of more dead old people. If you're old and vulnerable, but not near death, a year of reduced social exposure might be better for you. Sadly the pandemic measures have forced us to sacrifice one for the other. I fear my toddler's development will always be just a little decayed due to masks during her early linguistic development and being shut in the house during shutdowns. But I also acknowledge some old folks may have been saved at her expense.
• sebow 5y ago
  Why are we still debating this bullsh1t? This current global crisis has stopped being a healthcare one for a year now [I frankly would say almost 2 years now because until ~april-may 2020 any statement about the virus would have been hard to verify].
• bumby 5y ago
  I found this discussion between 3 MDs to be one of the more enlightened ones on the subject: https://peterattiamd.com/covid-19-current-state-omicron/ https://peterattiamd.com/covid-19-current-state-omicron/ One of the big takeaways for me, personally, was that the push for boosters may be, in part, due to measuring the wrong thing, namely circulating antibodies as a measure of resistance to infection. Even when antibody levels dropped weeks/months later, it seems people still maintained B-cell and T-cell immunity. From the link: "A Johns Hopkins study in pre-print shows the importance of T-cell immunity in protection from COVID -This is an under recognized part of the immune system and absent from much COVID discussion -T cell immunity is solid against Omicron as it is for Delta" P.S. - Here's my chance at one of my favorite dad jokes: Why have scientists been researching ants to battle COVID? Because they all have ant-y bodies... :-)
  • deleted 5y ago
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• jokoon 5y ago
  This virus is so weird. It's just at the limit between dangerous and tolerable. It just doesn't kill enough people to add more restrictions. It's odd how humans of today will not agree to change their habits when the punishment is mild.
• 71a54xd 5y ago
  I know a fully vaccinated person (2x pfizer vaccine) in NYC who's also received 2x boosters and is NOT immunocompromised and has legitimately tested positive for covid three separate times. I'm vaccinated with a booster and I'm starting to loose sight of the point. That said, cases are skyrocketing and hospitalizations (most of which are unvaccinated people) have only slightly increased. I've already given up two years of my life, that's about enough.
• ausbah 5y ago
  my guess for a while has been that covid is endemic at this point and will be "a thing to live with" like the flu, where it would be in the best interest of everyone if they stayed home, got vaccinated every year (or as necessary), etc. - but is now a "personal responsibility" or however you would like to frame it
• cbtacy 5y ago
  "Weaponized selfishness"
• deleted 5y ago
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• focusgroup0 5y ago
  Joe Rogan interview doing numbers LOL
• Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  It's amazing how many can't see overshoot when they're in. Even more amazing that they don't realize that those who are the loudest in overshoot tend to end up being those most effected by the blowback that results. Funny enough, one of those is going to end up being Donald Trump, who is still trying very hard to cast himself as the savior of the pandemic. Of course he will be mostly isolated from the consequences other than having his dream of a 2024 comeback dashed. It's going to be hard on those with lesser resources to ameliorate the storm they find themselves in.
• munificent 5y ago
  > To understand how ideologically scrambling the Omicron wave has been, consider this: Some 2022 Democrats are sounding like 2020 Republicans. ... In the current Omicron wave, these Republican talking points seem to have mostly come true—for most vaccinated non-senior adults, who are disproportionately Democrats. This is such a stupid lead sentence. 2020 Republicans and 2022 Democrats are talking about different diseases in an entirely different global context. The talking points didn't "come true" any more than saying it's raining while it's sunny out "comes true" if it happens to start raining a week later. The Republicans in 2020 were completely wrong to downplay the seriousness of a rapidly spreading disease we knew little about, that was killing thousands of people, and that we had no vaccines or good treatments for. The fact that the current strain is less deadly, we've learned more about it, millions are vaccinated, and we have better treatments doesn't mean they were somehow right all along.
• dirtyid 5y ago
  Vaxed, booted, probably going to get omicron + super immunity before winter ends. What else is there to do. Lowkey waiting for crop dusters to drop aerosolized vaccine on the regular.
  • NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
    >Lowkey waiting for crop dusters to drop aerosolized vaccine on the regular. Yeah, just like with DDT!
• toshk 5y ago
  Of course people are done with it. Vaccinations were sold as the solution to the pandemic. Yet worldwide infections are going up at the same speed if not faster than before vaccinations. But no policy maker acknowledges this. They refer to the lowered death rate, or blame a new variant. But it means that policy that gave people more freedom because of their vaccination status are not having any significant effect on decreasing the spread of the disease, they might even make it worse by allowing infectious people to mingle. Therefore it's very unreasonable and authoritarian to not allow travel, shopping and even fire people over their vaccination status, when an individual decision clearly has a minimal effect on the collective. Yet politicians are not budging but doubling down on vaccination policy, if there was any trust left in the integrity and capability of our leaders...
  • isubasinghe 5y ago
    At the same time though, opening up completely comes at hospitals being overwhelmed, supply chains breaking apart (already happened in my country). It is a bit of a paradox. There is no right action it seems, locking up doesn't make sense but neither does opening up.
  • lambdaba 5y ago
    A lot of people at all levels are having a huge boost in the power (or influence) they can exert. It's hard to convince them to give it away, especially when they have still a sizable crowd cheering them on.
  • amatecha 5y ago
    There's some real irony that the people most likely to spread COVID -- those who are vaccinated and thus don't show symptoms -- are the ones "allowed" to engage in the most risky behaviour like large gatherings at restaurants, bars, theatres, sports arenas. Meanwhile those second-class citizens who are non-vaccinated won't take those risks and will also definitely know if they are sick, hilariously probably behaving the most safely/cautiously, as everyone should. Just as expected, infection rates just skyrocket due to new variants and people thinking "I'm protected" as they act as if there's no pandemic at all. Great.
• scelerat 5y ago
  Most vaccination opposition I've encountered in my personal life fits squarely in the venn overlap of personal fiat and political posturing. It's now fashionable to be anti-vax, whether because it demonstrates your disdain for the government or a particular political party. More than once I've had family members insist that vaccination, or mask-wearing, or any kind of caution, was merely a "personal choice" before themselves getting sick and infecting someone else who became gravely ill because of it. Any talk of our cultural schism over the remedial responses to the epidemic which does not include discussion of political leadership and propaganda is itself seriously flawed and misleading. Nobody gave a crap about flu vaccines. We all know why this is different.
• StillBored 5y ago
  Vaxxed and I caught Cov19 a couple weeks ago (likely omicron). Same with the wife. I've had allergies that were worse. It was a 3 day event with a very mild fever and a bit of a cough the last day. It was extremely mild, and if I hadn't decided to take a couple days off to catch up on my reading after getting tested, I would have probably just eaten a couple advil and continued on as though nothing happened. So now I'm considering skipping any future boosters unless they specifically target a new more dangerous strain. That said, I'm also still wearing a mask, although i'm having a hard time with the whole concept now too since i should be able to keep my immunity going simply by keeping myself exposed. I was a pretty strong advocate of mask wearing even when the CDC initially told people they could take it off, instead deciding to wait until more people were vaccinated (which never happened in TX). But now, I suspect I might be doing myself a disservice by not exposing myself to all the variants and things floating around.
  • layer8 5y ago
    The main reason to wear a mask is to prevent yourself from infecting others if/when you get infected again. One usually becomes infectious before the symptoms become obvious, i.e. before becoming aware of the new infection. Wearing a mask is mainly for the benefit of others, not for your own. And it’s a game of numbers. The larger the proportion of the population who wears a mask, the more the spread of the virus is contained. It is a bit like democracy: One's own vote doesn’t make a significant difference, but the collective votes do.
    • Tycho 5y ago
      What is your source for the claim that one usually becomes infectious before becoming aware of the infection from symptoms?
      • layer8 5y ago
        I thought it was well-known that the peak of the infectiousness tends to occur before the symptoms develop (if they develop at all), which is an important reason why the virus is so difficult to contain. For example from the WHO site: "Laboratory data suggests that infected people appear to be most infectious just before they develop symptoms (namely 2 days before they develop symptoms) and early in their illness." https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-how-is-it-transmitted https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/cor...
• nevinera 5y ago
  From conversations with various people (and not any kind of meaningful study), it seems to me that there is a qualitatively different experience of this situation for people that naturally think about things all the time. For my wife, having to skip the occasional event that she'd like to go to isn't a big deal, but having to constantly think about how risky each behavior is and make a conscious decision weighing that risk against other factors (like social expectations and psychological needs) is _extremely_ effortful. I view "vaxxed and done" as a form of rounding, selected by people who find it psychologically untenable to handle a changed _risk profile_ by changing their behaviors in moderate ways. I'm boosted, as is everyone I'm in contact with - that has shifted my risk profile sufficiently that I felt comfortable eating at some restaurants (but not others) and at nearly any normal outdoor event, but not at a concert, a crowded bar, or a packed bus. But I have to keep an eye on infection rates, and change my behavior when they shift radically (as now), or when the risk profile updates for a new mutation.. And that's tractable for me - I think about everything I do, constantly, which I assume is much more true among the tech crowd than the population at large. But most people _just don't do that_ kind of thing - being told to keep worrying about and considering a thing constantly sounds to many like "just keep stabbing yourself in the arm every day and eventually things will be fine". I don't know what there is to do about that, but I think it would be valuable for some folks in here to have a more realistic idea of the cost constant vigilance so often imposes.
  • armchairhacker 5y ago
    i’m young, vaxxed, and i still think about the implications of covid when going to events. It goes kind of like this: - Is this a public area where immunocompromised people have to be (e.g. grocery stores, doctors offices?) If so then I wear a mask - Is this an area which isn’t really safe for immunocompromised people anyways (e.g. restaurants, gyms). If so then i don’t wear a mask unless they require it or someone asks me - Am I hanging out at a friends house or venue with other friends, all young and presumably vaccinated? If so then i don’t take any precautions, even if it’s a large tightly-packed gathering the risk of any serious infection is minimal and the virus is spreading anyways People need to understand that “stay safe and weigh the risks” does not mean “take unnecessary precautions and constantly worry”. It takes 2sec to realize that hanging out with vaccinated friends and family and strangers is completely fine, and maybe i should bring a mask in my pocket just in case i need to call a Lyft or stop somewhere.
• eruci 5y ago
  We've fattened the curve.
• rightbyte 5y ago
  Why the 'xx'? I mean "X-mas" is a cross I get that. But why "vaxx".
• CedarMills 5y ago
  I'm not vaxxed - but want to be. I tested positive for COVID now a second time last week and taking a few days off to be safe. This time it felt a lot easier to go through so I assume it's Omicron. First time around in July 2020, I was in bed for a day and couldn't smell anything for about a month. My partner on the other hand has no desire for us to get vaxxed because they know people personally who have died after getting the shots. We also know many who died from getting COVID. We're not anti-vax people generally, our kids are all got regular shots but with this, we decided to skip it for the time being. Knowing this, we intentionally wear masks when needed and try to operate safely and give distance. I think the US government failed in communicating properly and now with the approach of "shunning the unvaxxed", it's only causing further divide and a lot of my conservative friends will now never get it as a way to spite the government orders.
  • 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
    > they know people personally who have died after getting the shots I don't think that's possible...
  • confidantlake 5y ago
    They never would have gotten it anyway.
• zcw100 5y ago
  It feels like a lot of the replies here are dubious and I suspect a large number of them are from antivaxxers who are trying to amplify a message of, "See, even people that got the vaccine are sick and tired of it. They're with us even though we don't agree with them"
• at_a_remove 5y ago
  Given that this has an animal reservoir, and has now infected multiple mammals, I think we can put it in the "Never Going Away" category, in that even if we stopped human-to-human transmission entirely, it would still pop up like rabies. The best case scenario is that it begins to look like the flu, unless someone comes up with a vaccine which makes you immune to all variants forever. One of the bigger mistakes around this focused on a compliance percentage that was unrealistic. We can't even get people to stop killing one another, the idea that everyone was going to upend their lives in a sudden bout of cooperation was not a reasonable expectation. The resistance we are to expect is beyond the four percent "lizardman constant" and probably closer to twenty or thirty percent. And the moment it became politicized, the compliance percentage would drop even further. Then you have to ask yourself, how long will people put up with it? How long will people stick to a diet? How long will they keep to their budgets? Generally, long-term discipline does not happen as much as we would like. Most pandemic responses were formulated with overly optimistic opinions about compliance rates and how long people would do whatever you told them. Meanwhile, various authorities are fumbling around and eroding confidence. At one school in a city where Omicron rates were booming, school administrators made attendance mandatory for some gathering to talk about the hat situation. Apparently, dealing with the hat situation was more important than avoiding creating a possible superspreader event. The more of this senselessness that becomes evident, the less people are apt to do what they are told. Frankly, we've done about as well as I could have expected.
• yob22 5y ago
• jorblumesea 5y ago
  The problem is that "being done" or "being over it" doesn't matter. The virus doesn't care how we feel. There are still consequences for catching the virus, even if vaxxed. There are consequences for spreading it, since vaccination rates in many places are low and unvaxxed end up in the ICU and tie up resources. You, being over it and not isolating or being cautious, could mean someone's Stage IV cancer surgery is cancelled. It's not what people want to hear, but it's the truth.
• ensan 5y ago
  I’m under 30, healthy, and have no kids. I got both doses of Pfizer as soon as I could last year. But until a more severe (than Omicron) variant arrives, I’m not planning to get a booster. That calculus may be different for others and I totally understand. In fact, I encouraged my parents and grandparents to get the booster as soon as they could.
• aeturnum 5y ago
  > I’m prepared to treat this like I’ve treated the flu: by basically not worrying about it and living my life normally. I wish I could feel this way! I actually have little to fear from the initial covid infection and, if covid were 'just like' the flu, I would go back to my old patterns. Unfortunately, I know people in higher-risk categories (my parents included) for whom a covid infection would be significantly worse than the flu (though likely not fatal) and the research on 'long covid' is both developing and scary[1]. We aren't sure about the risk factors yet, which means it's hard to estimate how careful to be[2]. Ultimately we will all, individually, need to make decisions about when things seem 'safe enough.' I don't begrudge people making their own decisions, as long as they behave in a way that allows me to continue to make my own decisions. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/16/1064594686/how-covid-threatens-the-brain https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/16/1064594... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57833394 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57833394
• jat850 5y ago
  I am curious if those (especially posting here aligning with this position) would change their minds if a more deadly variant were to arise, if the vaccines available evolved to better match the strains by probability, or otherwise.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• BoysenberryPi 5y ago
  I don't want to talk about vaccines anymore. Whatever study people have to cherry pick or whatever beliefs you may hold, whatever your stance is, most people have made the decision on whether or not to be vaccinated. What I wish we focused on instead, is the medical system as a whole. We've been hearing stories everyday about how hospitals are on the brink of collapse. Why, in 2 years of this pandemic, have we not devoted the resources to expanding bed capacity and staffing hospitals? Why is testing still so unsustainable? From day 1 of the pandemic, from social distancing, to masking, to now getting vaccinated, the messaging has been do all of these things to avoid overwhelming the hospitals so it seems weird to me that 2 years later the messaging is exactly the same.
  • BobbyJo 5y ago
    We aren't short on 'resources', we are short on doctors and nurses. It doesn't matter how much money you throw at things, the number of doctors isn't going to change drastically. You can pay them 10x and the number won't change. We only have so many medical schools, and so many people willing to throw themselves on the sword to get through them. Nurses are a little more flexible in that more money might mean more nurses, but only up to a point. In either case, throwing a ton more people into a long term career to deal with a short term problem (I don't see hospitals needing the same capacity in 3 years that they do for the next wave) will cause other problems down the road.
    • kalstone 5y ago
      It also did not help to have mass firings of doctors and nurses just as the new variant rolled in
    • 01100011 5y ago
      > It doesn't matter how much money you throw at things, the number of doctors isn't going to change drastically. I don't think that's true. If being a doctor had the same work:pay ratio as being a SW dev I think you'd have more smart people choosing that career. Health regulations and extra procedures certainly helped to discourage employment as well, but I think pay would help. > I don't see hospitals needing the same capacity in 3 years The baby boomers are just starting to enter their mid 70s. Sure, it may not reach COVID-surge levels, but they are going to need a lot of health care.
• chmod600 5y ago
  Covid is no longer an emergency. It's been two years. It's time for the executives and individual teachers to stand down and work within the intent of the laws as they are on the books. If the legislatures didn't pass the right laws, then too bad, and people may die. But anything else is tyranny of the executive. And if we don't take the power back from them now, they will never give it up later. It may already be too late.
• outside1234 5y ago
  Its time to move on. Everyone has had a chance to get vaccinated and boosted that is at high risk (under 5s are not at high risk). We can't live in our houses forever. Said another way, the mental health issues with being stuck in our houses are much more severe than COVID-19 at this point.
• locallost 5y ago
  I'm in this group. It's not that I desperately want to go on a vacation or back to a normal life, whatever that is, but that the governments around the world have demonstrated total cluelessness on how to fix the problem. And I am even OK with that! Nobody knows and it's ok. But at least show some form of a plan and stick to it. Instead we have just a ton of interest groups each pulling in their own direction. So we have lockdowns, maybe something is gained from it, but then everything opens up, we need to save restaurants etc. and then of course we need another lockdown and so on. We're not accomplishing anything, that we have a new worse variant every nine months is proof of that. So yeah, I got my booster, I wear a mask, test when meeting larger groups of people (and others do too), but obsessing about it all day does not accomplish anything.
• Animats 5y ago
  We still don't know if the omicron variant leads to "long COVID".[1] We'll know some time in February. That has a big effect on what to do next. Omicron-specific vaccines are in test. Moderna's should be out in Fall 2022. Pfizer claims March 2022.[2] The next generation in vaccine technology is the US Army / Walter Reed Medical Center broad-spectrum vaccine. This should protect against all COVID and SARS variants.[3] That's in Phase I safety testing, with about 75 volunteers. If that works, the problem is solved. [1] https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/-omicron-the-pandemic-killer-idea-ignores-dangers-of-long-covid https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/-omicron-the-pand... [2] https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-provide-update-omicron-variant https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta... [3] https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/12/us-army-creates-single-vaccine-effective-against-all-covid-sars-variants/360089/ https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/12/us-army-create...
  • twblalock 5y ago
    > The next generation in vaccine technology is the US Army / Walter Reed Medical Center broad-spectrum vaccine. This should protect against all COVID and SARS variants.[3] That's in Phase I safety testing, with about 75 volunteers. If that works, the problem is solved. Sure, until the next variant. The problem of the spread was mostly solved by vaccines before Omicron, at least for people who got the vaccines. Then Omicron came along and it can break through the vaccines much easier than Delta or other variants. If we develop a vaccine for Omicron, some other variant is likely to come along and break through that vaccine too. Omicron was far more mutated than Delta. Are we just supposed to hope that doesn't happen again? Is is possible for a vaccine to protect against all possible future variants? We can't keep a state of emergency in place and wait for one new vaccine, after another, endlessly. When does it end? Let's say we do have a magic bullet vaccine that protects against all present variants, and all possible future variants: wouldn't a significant number of people refuse to take it, as they have refused to take the vaccines we have now?
    • valachio 5y ago
      It ends when people say it ends. There will always be natural disasters, whether it's earthquakes or viruses. If it's a new virus, yes people are going to die, yes hospitals are going to be overwhelmed (in fact I would be surprised if hospitals aren't overwhelmed when a new virus hits, which just means that hospital was over-funded and has too many idle staff). The virus was a creation of nature (conspiracy theories notwithstanding), but the lockdown and all these governmental restrictions are man-made. Even if the virus went away, the lockdown can continue if people want it to go on. It can go on for the rest of human civilization if we want it to. Or it can end right at this moment, if the people go out and tell their government that it's time to stop.
• ravenstine 5y ago
  I think I can tell how this will be received, but here it goes. I'm vaccinated, not boosted. I consider myself "vaxxed and done" because, based on the data we are seeing, I don't believe it makes sense for me as an individual to become more vaccinated. People should have the choice to take it based on their own needs. As with pretty much every one-size-fits-all health program to come from the federal government, to me it's pretty clear that applying the same logic to SARS-CoV-2 is a not-so-good move in the long term. The fact that federal mandates and several boosters are on the table does the opposite of convincing me that I should continue to be a part of this science experiment. People against these vaccines or those who had one and aren't getting any more might very well be wrong, but their reasons aren't necessarily stupid. You may not agree with my current stance, but am I stupid or crazy? Having had COVID twice (once before the vaccine and once after) as a young person who is fit, works out, eats healthy, and has survived without even being able to tell the difference between this particular disease and a bad cold, I can't distinguish a benefit to more vaccines for myself or for others around me. If I can still spread the disease during the vaccine's full potency, and the virus is here to stay, and others can choose to keep taking vaccines, and I spend the vast majority of time isolated at home, and I get antibodies from catching the disease, and I regularly take greater risks with my life than I have from COVID as an individual, then I really just can't see the point. What's worse is I really struggle to recognize the authority of those whom are still, nearly 2 years later, insisting on masks and vaccines and social distancing. Putting effort into vaccinating very young children and prioritizing that over vaccinating other parts of the world makes little sense to me, at least in relation to the narrative that this is a virus we can control. Is it great that we have these mRNA treatments? Absolutely. Is taking them indefinitely, using them on people who don't have a great need for them, and continuing this whole mask and distancing thing reasonable and sensible? I don't see the sense in it. The fact that every indoor establishment, in my experience, forces you to act like the virus is only a danger until you sit down 15 feet from the entrance tells me a lot. Once you sit down at a table, then being maskless is a-ok even if you haven't gotten your food yet. It tells me that a large swath of the public either doesn't truly believe in the danger. It tells me that we are doing irrational things, and irrationality rarely occurs in isolation. People should do what they think is important. If you're elderly, the vaccine is probably right for you. Now that we've lived in a pandemic for what seems like forever now, the intellectual insult in having absurdities thrown in my face is worse than the virus has been to me. So no, I don't plan on getting a booster, and I've moved on with my life. If SARS-CoV-2 is here to stay as another seasonal endemic disease, then it's really time to settle down with the panicking and allow it to develop into effectively any of the other coronaviruses that are already endemic. We are fortunate that's even a possibility that seems to be proving out.
• Jerrrry 5y ago
  The best thing everyone can do is to go get Omnicron, give it to everyone quickly, so that we can all synchronize our collective immune effort. Quarantine is the antithesis to that, and can throw away this opportunity. Don't get vaccinated, get Omnicron. Go get Omnicron, and give it to everyone, before we miss this small window.
  • twiddling 5y ago
    wtf?
    • Jerrrry 5y ago
      Would you like me to explain what a god-send Omnicron is? Or do you want me to explain what happens if we miss this chance at a collective immune response.
• 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  I've never had a problem with the COVID restrictions or vaccines. They're almost comically benign. There are so much more horrible things that people are forced to go through every day in this country; people who are homeless, who get abused, who don't have enough to eat, who risk getting shot or stabbed just walking through their neighborhood, who don't have access to transportation, education, jobs. Or those who juggle multiple jobs, childcare, eldercare, relationships, going paycheck to paycheck. I am incredibly lucky to be healthy and safe with a steady job. To imagine that I can save a human life just by getting a shot, putting some cloth on my face, and standing 6 feet away from people, is amazing. Happy to do it. When I'm old I'll be grateful if today's children do the same for me.
• seneca 5y ago
  I, personally, find it amazing that so many people were willing to sacrifice nearly two years of their quality-of-life to fight a virus that wouldn't hurt most of them. I know everyone is doom and gloom about covid, but I'm actually pretty impressed with how much the typical person (outside of political manipulation and coercion) was willing to sacrifice for others. If you had asked me in early 2020 how long it was possible to keep this up, I'd have guessed 6 months or so. Lament all you want that people are dropping their vigilance, or about how effective any of it actually was, but I'm generally pretty impressed with how far the "common man" was willing to go.
  • 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
    > so many people were willing to sacrifice nearly two years of their quality-of-life This always smacks of hyperbole. How much quality of life was sacrificed, really? It's not like we had to all go dig trenches or something. We just had to stop going to brunch.
    • spookthesunset 5y ago
      Man the privilege required to say what you just wrote is amazing. Not everybody works some cushy work from home tech job. Many people had their life’s work destroyed, their career ripped from them, they got to watch the education system fuck over their kids. Maybe all you lost was brunch, but these last years cost many people a lot. It’s almost insulting to just brush off what we did the last two year as something minor.
      • 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
        The parent commenter that I was replying to was talking about: "people [who] were willing to sacrifice [..] their quality-of-life" Not people who got fucked over as collateral damage by the pandemic. But people who sacrificed. A sacrifice is "giving up something highly valued for the sake of something else", and it's something you "give", not something someone takes against your will. The essential workers who sacrificed were and are heroes. First responders, nurses, doctors, teachers, grocery store clerks, vaccine scientists. The people keeping us alive. They deserve our respect and admiration for their sacrifice. But the parent commenter says they sacrificed their "quality of life". That's something very vague. It's not necessarily their livelihood, or apartment, or life. "Quality of life" could mean nearly anything that makes you happy. There's a whole bunch of people who are not essential workers who think that what they sacrificed is just as important, and those people's "quality of life sacrifice" were leisure activities like brunch. Or, like the parents who just don't want to deal with their kids, "sacrificed their kid's education" (even though no kid's education is destroyed by a year or two of sitting inside). Probably a majority of the population complaining about their quality of life are these people, and that's who I'm referring to.
• mherdeg 5y ago
  Two sources I've been reading on the endgame here: (1) Circuit-breaker criteria for interventions (vax mandates, mask mandates, indoor gathering restrictions, etc): https://alexanderjxchen.github.io/circuitbreaker/ https://alexanderjxchen.github.io/circuitbreaker/ This chart has helped me understand how public-health entities could explain future interventions. The major issue it illustrates is the choices of the voluntarily unvaccinated can affect everyone by clogging hospital availability for everyone. Targeted interventions can reduce this impact. This is, notably imho, different from attempting to protect medically at-risk people who cannot be vaccinated. (2) Ian Mackay's recent post has helped me imagine what the shift to SARS-CoV-2 as an endemic illness will feel like: https://virologydownunder.com/living-next-door-to-alice/ https://virologydownunder.com/living-next-door-to-alice/ Mackay says that, whether or not we want this outcome, the world is making public-policy choices that will lead to humans living alongside endemic SARS-CoV-2 forever. He says the turning point will come when there is no longer a number to put on the wall: > And at some point soon, testing levels will drop as the public realise there is little point in queueing and getting swabbed or paying for rapid antigen tests (RAT) when there are few conditions in place to do anything with those results. Slowly those who are sick “enough” or need evidence that they are infected will get tested. Fever clinics and drive through testing will slow down and pack away. We will know only very approximately how many cases are in the community from at that point. This is a significant shift from the super intense scrutiny of case numbers we’ve had in Australia. Then the media will also stop caring as much. While he's writing about Australia, and I think writing in the context of a public-health expert who is dispirited by seeing a case explosion accompany the lifting of restrictions, his point resonates -- my feeling is that the pandemic will be "over" in the US when nytimes.com no longer has the little sparklines with covid case counts. Mackay suggests that the shift to endemic illness means some people who are currently being protected will die: > Even with a great vaccine, there will be those with waning immunity. There will be new birth cohorts with no immunity. There will be those who don’t get vaccinated. There will be those with immune systems that don’t work as well as needed. There will be some with risk factors that may override the protection afforded by vaccine immunity, subjecting them to a baseline of worse outcomes. Together these people will likely see more severe COVID-19. This is a tale that can also be told about other infectious diseases. There is always a proportion we can’t protect. He highlights post-covid conditions as the remaining wild card. What fraction of people who are infected and recover will have long-term health impacts? Will we have to adjust society to accommodate those people? I found Mackay's early 2020 blog posts helpful in wrapping my head around what we were about to experience and thought they held up pretty well ( https://virologydownunder.com/past-time-to-tell-the-public-it-will-probably-go-pandemic-and-we-should-all-prepare-now/ https://virologydownunder.com/past-time-to-tell-the-public-i... , https://virologydownunder.com/so-you-think-youve-about-to-be-in-a-pandemic/ https://virologydownunder.com/so-you-think-youve-about-to-be... ). I also thought his "Swiss cheese" diagram ( https://virologydownunder.com/the-swiss-cheese-infographic-that-went-viral/ https://virologydownunder.com/the-swiss-cheese-infographic-t... ) did a good job of communicating why classrooms should have 5-6 air changes per hour of MERV13 filtered or outdoor air and how that fits in with other ways of reducing all sorts of respiratory illness (even beyond covid).
• serverlessmom 5y ago
  It's a really hard position that we find ourselves in. In the beginning when we believed that there was a chance of containing Covid-19, many people I knew(myself included) thought that we would finish with this pandemic within a year. Due to a variety of reasons including poor over all handling of the pandemic by world governments, people refusing to wear masks or respect social distancing guidelines, or to get vaccines, that path was closed to us. We are now two years into this, and for people like me who are vaccinated and boosted... Who have spent the entire pandemic following guidelines, avoiding social gatherings, watching others flout the rules... Getting Omnicron and riding it out at home for supposed "super immunity" is looking pretty attractive. I'm exhausted from dealing with the pandemic, everyone is. My heart hurts for the people who can't get the vaccine and want to, but my sympathy is running low for folks who have simply refused. I experience shame when I catch myself thinking, "We can't let this run our lives forever!", knowing that it was the rallying cry of people early on in the pandemic who refused to cooperate with CDC recommendations. I very rarely share personal anecdotes involving my family, but here goes: I have been watching my mother care for my grandmother whom is in hospice care for about a year now. My grandmother was already sickly enough that they chose not to get her vaccinated when the vaccine came out. This in part because my grandmother has a bad enough grasp on reality at this point that she becomes confused when she leaves her house and my mother is trying to avoid her having a panic attack and possibly hurting herself or straining her already damaged heart. My grandmother is housebound and mostly bed bound, and my mother mostly works at home and takes care of her. In the beginning my mother wasn't letting people into the house to see grandma, but my mother thought that there would be time for the pandemic to pass for my grandmother to see her other family members before she passed. Now grandma's health is declining and there is a growing sense of urgency. My mother is distraught... Does she let grandma pass without seeing her family members again(Really more for the family members than grandma at this point, but maybe not in my mother's mind), or does she risk bringing covid into the house and ending grandma's life potentially a bit prematurely and frankly awfully? My mother is caught in the very non-enviable decision between quality of life and length of life... For her own mother. I know this is a decision that many families have to make for their loved ones, but in the midst of a global pandemic when so many have lost their lives it feels even sadder somehow.
• skyde 5y ago
  yeah but 45% of Americans still didn't get vaccinated :)
• pdimitar 5y ago
  I enjoy such balanced pieces and I think in times of hugely divisive topics like with COVID we need more of them! My big thanks and compliments to the author. > We have no idea what the effects of Omicron on long COVID will be, but evidence of lingering symptoms should make us wary of just letting tens of millions of people get needlessly infected. That... reads a little bit like what your typical hypochondriacs say. We have lingering symptoms of other illnesses as well (like bronchi-pneumonia). Mathematically speaking, all hypochondriacs are technically correct, but the same applies for many other things that people just don't think about. There is no such thing as "zero percent risk". In the end it's all about (a) the risk % and (b) whether that % is acceptable but alas, I don't think humanity will soon agree on actual numbers related to COVID. That's the crux and the core of the entire segregation issue. It boils down to: if COVID truly kills 3% of people then that's horrifying; but if it kills 0.03% then why bother at all? --- I sympathize a little more with the "vaxxed and done" group. Endlessly worrying about risks that get smaller and smaller as herd immunity is nearing completion does not seem to be worth shutting down society for (if the risk is indeed getting smaller but random bits and pieces of news make me think this is the case). And we're also likely mortally wounding the economy so much that the kids whose physical health we are so worried about right now will have to deal with our mess and suffer severe mental health problems for decades (maybe a next Great Depression even?). I think that's a worthy discussion to have. --- "We need to keep the measures for the kids" I hear you but I don't think people will ever arrive at an universal consensus on this topic. Even if the lockdowns last forever a lot of cultures around the world will still not change. E.g. where I live kids having a scratchy cough merits a pat on the head and insistence of drinking hot tea with lemon and honey and a few pills, and the matter is considered done (and 99% of the time it really actually is done). On the other end of the spectrum we have parents that give me murderous looks if I sneeze in the mall at a 5m distance from their kid. Sorry but it gets a little absurd at this point. I get it, you get over-protective when you are a parent but you should also abide by the society you live in. If you are that worried then maybe don't live in the city? I definitely have not gone out just to murder your kid so maybe loosen up a little. We're all in this together. --- Many things in this world carry some risk and we just accept it and don't think about it. And I literally mean thousands such things. As COVID starts looking like a minor threat more and more with time (also illustrated by the "flurona" thing lately; it almost sounds like some medical professionals are ready to call COVID "a flu"?) we have to start asking ourselves if we aren't perpetuating extreme measures for a dwindling threat. Continuous reassessment and readjusting is key. Maybe it's time to take a hard long honest look on how things are today. As a starting point, many doctors are saying that Omicron is more infectious but that a lot of their patients barely feel it. IMO we shouldn't get distracted by segregation and point fingers at each other. That solved absolutely nothing so far and it's not realistic to expect it to change in the future. Let's work on getting some actual numbers and see what we should do next?
• stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I am a gen-x firmly in this camp. I feel I've done my part for nearly 2 years. Unless omicron starts decimating people I'm also pretty much done except for future boosters as recommended by CDC and research. I am burned out. I am hanging out with friends who are in the same boat as me. I will respect masking up with people who want to do that, but that's much more rare these days with friends and family. Life is full of risk and we just have to weight the situation and go from there. For me, currently, that is I don't bother with masks and count on my immune system and vax.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• uptownfunk 5y ago
  <Unpopular opinion> If you think this is bad, wait until there is a recombinant variant that is a mix of Delta and Omicron. They are already calling it deltacron. - Frankly, I don't know how much more the collective psychological fabric can withstand. So many are well-past their breaking point. - Sending positive thoughts to all of you that we can continue to survive and persevere. - Many of us don't have the option to just stop (as much as I'd like to). I've got a wife and two kids to provide for. My asthmatic mom just caught Covid. I'm past burnt out but I'm just showing up until I can't even do that anymore. I'd consider myself a pretty tough person normally but this thing has just broken me. I can't imagine how others are coping. - Meanwhile I'm left thinking, how can we go on like this? How can I help others?
  • adamrezich 5y ago
    "deltacron" is pure memery just like "flurona" was a few days ago. something that comes and goes in the news cycle, people consume the fear porn, then a day or two passes and everyone's forgotten about it and moved onto the next thing while the fear instilled remains. I haven't kept up with this stuff because the whole thing is a joke at this point but a day or two ago when "deltacron" was announced, it was already being announced before the day's end that whoops it was a mistake... but it could still be coming!!
• standardUser 5y ago
  For those who think the addition of boosters is odd or suspicious, I suggest looking at the vaccine schedules published by the CDC. Not for Covid, but for the dozen or so vaccines most of us have already had. There is a lot of variety in how different vaccines are scheduled and multiple boosters are very common. Under 18: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolesc... 18 and over: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/adult.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/adult.html
• brodouevencode 5y ago
  I'd recommend reading "On Living In The Atomic Age" by C. S. Lewis.
• jquery 5y ago
• dukeofdoom 5y ago
  Individual medical decisions are the domain of the individual. If you support eroding this line, hope you enjoy your forcef daily nursing home sedative.
• maerF0x0 5y ago
  Between the 2nd dose putting me in the ER with myocarditis which no one warned me about the risk of, and a $3500 medical bill due, being told I could be maskless and free if I got the "vaccine"[1], getting covid anyways and it being nbd, and then learning that the CDC redefined the meaning of "vaccine" for this treatment[2] (imo "immunotherapy" would be a more understandable word) -- yeah I'm done. I'm not risking another ER visit, not paying $3500 more for "societal good", and I've lost trust/faith in the establishment to not play bait and switch. [1] - California had a brief period where if you got vaccinated you could be maskless in gyms and restaurants, this was rescinded in August 2021 [2] - https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article254111268.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25411126... The redefinition undermines what most would colloquially understand as a vaccine -- much like a "cure" something that to a major extent stops one from getting the disease, which the vaccine does not. Yes it's 80% effective at eliminating _hospitalization_ but vaccinated people still get Covid, still go through fever & long covid symptoms (loss of taste/smell anyone?), and still must quarantine else infect others.
  • groggo 5y ago
    > myocarditis which no one warned me about the risk of I agree, it's now known as a "rare" side effect, but I wasn't aware either until after I got the vaccine. How did you know something was wrong? I think a lot of people (including myself) feel heart pain after the vaccine but aren't sure if it's worth going to a doctor about it.
    • maerF0x0 5y ago
      I had heart/chest pain that slowly got more and more intense over the span of about 3-4 days after most of the 2nd dose side effects wore off. In hindsight I should have gone to the hospital much sooner for Heart attack symptoms, but I had an inkling it wasn't a heart attack because it entirely would go away if I laid on my side just so after about 60 seconds... and magically come back if I sat or stood up, and go away when I laid down again like a switch --> not heart attack symptoms.. anyways I digress. after EKG, xrays, bloodwork, a big scare and such the doctors put me on ibuprofen and it subsided after another ~3 days
• elevenoh 5y ago
  The data suggests: Young males with history of heart arrhythmia should be vaxxed. 90% of pregnant women should be not be vaxxed.
• mchusma 5y ago
  The author missed one point about the 'vaxxed and done'... some actively WANT the virus to spread at this point. If everyone is going to get it, then there is an argument to be made to just "get it over with". There are valid reasons to wait (hospital concerns, availability of Paxlovid), but there are also valid reasons to want this done now. The cost of waiting is high. The US is only expected to have 10m courses of Paxlovid by June. For a population of 330M, this means less than 1 in 30 people would even have access to it.
• iak8god 5y ago
  "Vaxxed and done" is a strange label for this sentiment: "For more than a year, I did everything that public-health authorities told me to do. I wore masks. I canceled vacations. I made sacrifices. I got vaccinated. I got boosted. I’m happy to get boosted again." I was expecting the article to be about people who, like me, are vaxxed and boosted and not really interested in getting more shots for this every six months perpetually.
• andrewclunn 5y ago
  So many commentators who say, "Your suffering is an indication that the vaccine worked!" or "That's the exception that proves, the rule! Look at this science!" when people raise concerns with the objectivity of our scientific institutions themselves. I am having a hard time distinguishing between these people and the thousands of CPP affiliated commenters that come on every YouTube video related to Chinese propaganda and policy. Here's a much better quote for this situation: "Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" - Groucho Marx
• Scea91 5y ago
  We've been convincing people to get vaccinated so they can restart normal life again. It is no surprise that lots of people are getting frustrated if the promise has not been delivered and there is no end in sight. Particularly, when they themselves are low-risk or already had mild COVID in the past.
• Tycho 5y ago
  I'm continually astonished that discussion of the vaccines seems to continue as if we can't plainly see that they are totally ineffective at preventing infection and transmission, and that the virus is a very minor threat for non-elderly, healthy people. It's as if some people are living in a parallel universe where vaccinated people are not getting infected, and other people are still dropping dead on subway platforms in viral videos.
• joelbondurant1 5y ago
• ryguytilidie 5y ago
  Its really weird how the "its just a flu, lol" crowd is totally okay with flu vaccines yearly but having more than 3 vaccines against a thing that has killed millions of people is JUST TOO MUCH. CAN'T HAVE THIS.
• agoose77 5y ago
  I can understand why people feel this way, and in the UK this is also somewhat prevalent. In part, it stems from the poor messaging on COVID risks (at the individual and population level) and control measures we have available. In short, the UK media are somewhat pushing "COVID is over" at the same time as "the only tool is lockdown, and we can't do that again". These two factors, I suspect, mean that people are encouraged by the vaccination-heavy strategy we're pursuing. Children are one group for whom this strategy may be problematic, and is a more significant issue in the UK than US right now given that only 12+ are eligible. This review discusses some of the arguments around this topic: https://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2021/11/01/archdischild-2021-323040 https://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2021/11/01/archdischild-20... We also have CEV and elderly groups for whom the vaccine still leaves a reasonable degree of risk. Here's an opinion piece that cites research into CEV & vaccine protection: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/03/30/vaccinated-yet-still-clinically-extremely-vulnerable/ https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/03/30/vaccinated-yet-still-cl... In addition to the health risk/benefit to the individual, there is also the societal cost to lost productivity. This is where keeping low COVID prevalence may be worth pursuing on a solely economic basis through low-invasiveness NPIs. Of course, there's also the risk of escape variants, and that's just simple maths. As vaccine-only strategies do not keep R(eff) < 1, there is reasonable potential for escape variants like Omicron to surface. Though I am not an expert, I am personally sceptical of arguments that suggest the evolution pathways of a virus are constrained to low virulence. In general, I think the UK is talking about living with COVID, but really means "ignoring COVID". There is room for making accommodations to our lives that keeps COVID incidence lower than present, and these are for the most part quite easy to do. Unfortunately, our vaccine-only policy & poor mask messaging has really damaged the public's appreciation for a multi-faceted public-health approach. The UK is currently enjoying far fewer restrictions than in the early waves, and life is for the most part "back to normal". However, high incidence rates after Christmas are leading to people adjusting behaviour despite few restrictions. Anecdotally, I would not visit the pubs that I went to in October/November because COVID incidence is ~7%. It feels to me as though western countries have forgotten that the rest of the world is in the throes of the pandemic, and ignoring this fact isn't going to help us in the long run. Despite the fact that we're all tired of this pandemic, keeping on top of things doesn't have to be draconian, and will be in our best interests whilst the majority of the world are unvaccinated.
• silexia 5y ago
  I am vaxxed and boosted. Everyone I know in my very Republican rural county got the new wave of Omicron in the last ten days, including me. No one got seriously ill. My symptoms were barely detectable. I am done with Covid, I did my part to stop prevention. At this point, it is damaging children to keep them locked up. People should live their lives as normal. People who are vulnerable are welcome to take precautions for themselves if they wish. I am returning to life as normal and recommend all of you do the same if you don't have a risk factor.