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We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

theglobeandmail.com

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Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This should drive down the death rate pretty fast. You can't drive the death rate that didn't rise in the first place. In Israel people are dying with COVID-19, not because of it. We are yet to see someone die from COVID-19 who is not terminally ill, fat and diabetic, immunosuppressed (after organ transplantation or cancer treatment) or very old.

Please stop. Having underlying health conditions that make you less likely to survive COVID-19 does not mean that you were not killed by COVID-19. We wouldn’t say that someone with peanut allergies was killed by the allergy — and not the peanut — so please just stop with this propaganda.

HIV / AIDS doesn't kill anyone.

Its the NEXT disease that kills you: all HIV does is kill off your white-blood cells and prevent your body from fighting off the next disease.

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Colloquially: when someone dies of a typical flu / cold when they were infected by AIDS, we call that "dying because of AIDS", even though AIDS had very little to do with the ultimate death of that person.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#92
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having underlying health conditions that make you less likely to survive COVID-19 does not mean that you were not killed by COVID-19. Dying is not "underlying health condition". Immune system collapse is happening before COVID-19 takes hold. If not for COVID, they would die from legionella, hospital infection, gum bacteria, flu, own E.coli and thousands of other causes. This is not my personal opinion, this is from…

When people talk about "pre-existing conditions" they mean things like high blood pressure or type 1 diabetes -- the kind of thing that can be well maintained and has almost no impact on the person.

Heart disease has no impact on the person? About 3,000 people die every day in the US because of this condition.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#93

Israelis give shots to medical workers and oldest citizens first. This should drive down the death rate pretty fast. If this approach works, Covid-related deaths in Israel should visibly drop by the end of January.

Aren't we doing the same here in the US?

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#94

Israelis give shots to medical workers and oldest citizens first. This should drive down the death rate pretty fast. If this approach works, Covid-related deaths in Israel should visibly drop by the end of January.

> This should drive down the death rate pretty fast. You can't drive the death rate that didn't rise in the first place. In Israel people are dying with COVID-19, not because of it. We are yet to see someone die from COVID-19 who is not terminally ill, fat and diabetic, immunosuppressed (after organ transplantation or cancer treatment) or very old.

I don't think you understand how "cause of death" reporting actually works.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#95

Israelis give shots to medical workers and oldest citizens first. This should drive down the death rate pretty fast. If this approach works, Covid-related deaths in Israel should visibly drop by the end of January.

I just spoke with some people in Israel. None of whom are healthcare workers. They all got the first shot of the vaccine. ~4 people.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#96
post #81
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment was flagged so I vouched for it. You may disagree with it but it’s a reasonable position. Look at the official moderna data from the FDA. The placebo and vaccine groups of 15k have the exact same death rate. So according to the very dataset used to approve the vaccine, there is a strong case that COVID isn’t killing people, rather it’s their underlying conditions. And curing COVID will not save most of t…

Did you look at the death rate this year? We are on track for 10٪ excess deaths, most of those with at least a decade of life expectancy. The clinical trial for the vaccine was not going to see this with only a few hundred observed cases. That's only a handful of deaths.

Which makes total sense when people are avoiding medical check ups and hospitals for fear of infection.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#97

It seems reasonable for different provinces to take different approaches, since their disease patterns vary significantly. Ontario and Québec have endured many weeks of increasing numbers of diagnosed infections per day, whilst the other provinces have seen decreases. The absolute incidences also vary between provinces, letting some test-and-trace cases more easily than others.

That's interesting phrasing. Ontario & Québec have increasing numbers but they still have lower per capita case rates than western provinces.

Not really true anymore, according to https://mackuba.eu/corona/#compare.daily?pop=1&c=ca-on,ca-qc...

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Page 31, table row "mitigate health inequities" says: An upside (green) of vaccinating essential workers (non-healthcare) first: "Racial and ethnic minority groups disproportionately represented in many essential industries. ~1/4 of essential workers live in low-income families." A downside (red) of vaccinating adults age >65 first: "Racial and ethnic minority groups under-represented among adults >65". The next page…

They don't say ethics outweighs science, do they? They're just two axes on which to evaluate the model. You're coming to some interesting conclusions from those slides, unless I'm misreading something.

I can see where the poster got confused, the powerpoint slides have some sloppy logic. Though whether that’s because of the people or because of the loose thinking caused by slides, or both, is hard to say.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#99

I wish there were a "flag" button but for the ensuing low-effort, low information discussion you know will come for a story clearly outside the expertise of anyone who posts here. flags as such If I come back and read any comment here that leaves me with more knowledge than when I arrived, I promise in the future to reward HN by donating 4 horror stories about uncles working union jobs.

There is. Go the direct link for a comment.

Re: We should administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, not reserve doses

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see any arguments in those slides about trying to “even out black vs white ppl deaths metric.” Social inequality is one of several factors included in their ethical and logistical plan, but interpreting that as an implied black vs white issue seems like a very uncharitable view of the author’s intent.

Page 31, table row "mitigate health inequities" says: An upside (green) of vaccinating essential workers (non-healthcare) first: "Racial and ethnic minority groups disproportionately represented in many essential industries. ~1/4 of essential workers live in low-income families." A downside (red) of vaccinating adults age >65 first: "Racial and ethnic minority groups under-represented among adults >65". The next page…

Adults in the US get universal single-payer health insurance at age 65, and that group is disproportionately white. They also point out that access to healthcare is required for a diagnosis that would place someone in the high-risk group. This is something you'd want to consider if you are in any way interested in evaluating institutional racism.

I think it is entirely fair to consider whether a policy institutionalizes that a person at high risk because of age is more important to save than person at high risk because of undiagnosed condition. .... or whether the groups that society expects to go to work in person should be protected over groups who have already been given social benefits that are intended to enable them to avoid going to work.

This is, as the powerpoint outlines, a purely ethical, and non-scientific evaluation of the situation. The scientific arguments are in their respective sections.

> But its recommendation is that "Ethics" outweighs "Science" (their terms, not mine)

I don't see this anywhere in the document.

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