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

theatlantic.com

551–560 of 1001 posts

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

#551

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 t…

> 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. At least now people start to realize that they work too much and that schools are not institutions of education any more but rather prisons for children so that their parents can…

Right on, and I can’t believe how seldom it’s heard. The current work-life-society bargain is terrible and we should expect terrible results until it’s re-negotiated.

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

#552

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 forese…

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

#553

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 tha…

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 a…

My process is somewhat more complex than that, but similar. I don't know if you've ever tried telling a worrier not to worry about something, but it's not a terribly fruitful approach :-)

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

#554

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 forese…

Your marshmallow test framing fails for me. Just as it is often important to signal community and solidarity, it is also often important to signal individuality and resistance to authority.

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

#555

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. Wit…

> 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. It actually still is important and advisable to keep your coronavirus vaccinations up to date. There's a reason why Israel marches ahead and begins to distribute the fourth shot in a year to the most vulnerable groups, and likely…

I'm not sure why you're voted down here. A lot of good information.

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

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of test were you able to get to determine that your kids' cases were of the omicron variant?

Guessing based entirely on symptoms, onset time across the household, and community prevalence.

Guessing sounds like really good public health policy.

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

#557

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 con…

But anybody who I spread it to and is vaxxed also has minimal, acceptable risk. If they aren't vaxed, that's on them.

Anybody except the elderly - a responsibly vaccinated septuagenarian or octogenarian has a very different, much worse risk profile compared to a responsibly vaccinated young adult. This group is about 3 out of every 100 people.

And anybody except the immunocompromised - you probably know at least a couple older family members, but may not immediately think of anyone immunocompromised, but again they're around 3% of the population. It includes those suffering from or using immunosuppressive drugs to manage type 1 diabetes, HIV, arthritis, cancer, organ transplants, lupus, IBD, and many other conditions.

Even before the vaccine, I - a 30 year old in good health - had what I personally consider to be an acceptable risk profile to contracting the vaccine. For me, it's never seemed an issue of personal safety, I've always been deferring plans, wearing a mask, isolating, been vaccinated, and been boosted to protect others. There are a few faces of elderly and immunocompromised people in my life that I can recall to help my emotional processing.

But it's becoming harder to run the emotionally-loaded math and feel morally culpable for the harm caused by my potentially transmitting it to the three of my coworkers who are vocally, rabidly antivax (all 60+, two with comorbidities) and then worry about their transmitting it to their unknown peers I'm sure they associate with who may be vaccinated but might be harmed.

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

#558
post #113

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…

I don't want to discourage you but it appears to me like with this variant (and probably even more with further variants), it will be impossible to avoid infection whatever you do (and I mean, mitigation strategies will have probably no effect). Look at the numbers we're suddenly getting without anything changing in the landscape (actually, despite a very high number of vaccinations). It looks like the virus has beco…

This reminds me of people who say that "duck and cover" is useless in the face of a nuclear strike.

Obviously mitigations won't help if you're blasted in the face by an airburst (nuclear or biological), but it seems like it could still help if you're on the fringe of exposure.

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

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got your anecdotes, and I've got mine. My 3 young kids all caught omicron last week. Each were lethargic for a day, had a minor sore throat, and were back to normal in a day or two. The flu last month was way scarier with high fevers. There's a lot of reason to be optimistic about omicron.

I kind of regret even mentioning the effects of COVID in my original comment as I figured there would be a reply like yours and you're not wrong! But it wasn't the main point I was trying to make. My main point is that everyone just seems to have moved on from under 5s. We've adopted a stance of "vaxxed and done" for adults and older children and paid no attention to the vax trials for under 5s taking forever. It's b…

Covid deaths amongst children was lower in 2020 than from the flu the year before with a severe Covid strain, 400 deaths vs 600 deaths from flu year before, and faced with a tame Omicron variant the FDA decided to skip the science advisory panel for childhood vaccines [1] because they last time denied the request. The way this is handled is unscientific, and has no balance of risk vs reward.

Moreover, the government should be representative and derive it's power from the consent of the governed. Not enforce compliance to administrative state edicts. The slide from a representative republic to a technocracy is worrying.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/dangerous-push-to-give-boosters...

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

#560
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.

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