More Americans are saying they’re ‘vaxxed and done’ • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by mgkimsal » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

denimnerd42 wrote: post #52

ashtonkem wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve gotten my flu shot yearly for my entire living memory. I don’t really understand why a booster vaccine for a pandemic that’s killed an order of magnitude more people than the flu does per year is some serious burden.

The covid vaccines make me seriously sick for at least a day or two.

If you didn't get sick from it (current formulation or perhaps new ones in future), would you just take it and move on?

Known downtime of a day or two (and not feeling well) is, to me, still a tradeoff to make compared to the potential of being intubated in an ICU. Each Pfizer shot I've had I've had somewhere of 8-18 hours of being really knocked out, usually starting around 24 hours after injection. I usually have milder (but some) reaction to flu vaccine each year (usually up to 8 hours of fatigue/headache/etc) within a day or so.

Risks/reward still moves to me take the shots.

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

#122

Post by vmception » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

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.

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

#123

Post by omosubi » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #93

I have to wonder how much of this comes down to a complete loss of empathy and patience with the willingly unvaxxed.

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.

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

#124

Post by wonderwonder » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

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.

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

#125

Post by yellowapple » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

jmole wrote: post #55

drewg123 wrote: post #26

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…

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.

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.

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

#126

Post by gattilorenz » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #96

haswell wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There would have been so much less confusion if they were consistent with their communication from the start I think it's worth considering a different framing: > "There would have been so much less confusion if COVID variants and transmission/hospitalization/death rates remained consistent from the start" It's easy to call out the communication, and don't get me wrong, it surely could have been better. But I often…

Exactly. It’s quite an unfair criticism, and it keeps being applied retroactively to thinks like masking, lockdowns, etc. It’s like people expect a government to have completely knowledge from day 1 of a new virus and all of its mutations across all of time. Throw in politicization of it, tons of non-mutual “facts” going around, a heap of anecdotes, and you’ve got a communications nightmare.

> It’s like people expect a government to have completely knowledge from day 1 of a new virus and all of its mutations across all of time

No, that's not what is being said. In the case of boosters, the communication (c|sh)ould have been "we're gonna give booster. For now we think only immunocompromised people will need them, but we can't really rule out other options. Further research will tell us whether other categories, or perhaps the whole population, could need it, although this does not seem the case at the moment."

Of course there's multiple problems with this: you don't sound on top of things, media will extract the most definitive quote from it anyway, hard to imagine the worst case scenario, etc. But it does seem that most government are messing up the communication badly (either sounding very paternalistic, blaming the citizens, never showing uncertainty despite the situation, changing measures before the previous ones can show an effect, etc.), at least for what I would consider a good, mature way to communicate with citizens. I'm no expert, tho.

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

#127

Post by jpm_sd » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

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?

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

#128

Post by majormajor » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

throwawayboise wrote: post #102

VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is effectively a disconnect between science and public policy. Science teaches us to keep our minds open to new data, so we can make new conclusions as we go. People just seem to get pissed when public policy changes in light of new data, lending to the narrative that scientists don't know what they're talking about.

I don't object to policy changes in light of new data, but do object to policy made based on preliminary data, knowing full well that we don't understand everything yet, and then changing every few months or even more often, and just shouting "SCIENCE!" if anyone questions any of it.

What's the alternative to setting policy on preliminary data? Are you proposing something like "government should never react to anything until 12 months have passed since it started happening." So something like COVID just cannot be responded to initially?

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

#129

Post by afavour » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 7:06 PM UTC

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.

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

#130

Post by Karrot_Kream » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 7:07 PM UTC

throwawayboise wrote: post #102

VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is effectively a disconnect between science and public policy. Science teaches us to keep our minds open to new data, so we can make new conclusions as we go. People just seem to get pissed when public policy changes in light of new data, lending to the narrative that scientists don't know what they're talking about.

I don't object to policy changes in light of new data, but do object to policy made based on preliminary data, knowing full well that we don't understand everything yet, and then changing every few months or even more often, and just shouting "SCIENCE!" if anyone questions any of it.

In an emergent situation, you'll never understand all the data in time. Imagine a loved one that's hurt who calls you for help after a crash. You could spend time trying to figure out their symptoms and their feelings, probing them for more information to make an accurate decision so that you don't have to actually waste the time to go over to them physically. Or you could just go over immediately and potentially waste time when it turns out your loved one would have been just fine without you. Most people choose the latter.

There's a reason emergency services dispatchers have such a stressful job, they're making these decisions all the time based on very limited amounts of data. Unfortunately we're all living in a situation right now where we're making emergency decisions as new information emerges.