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

theatlantic.com

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

#891

Post by JPKab »

rdw wrote: post #195
thomascgalvin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are a number of factors at play. One, we've greatly reduced the risk of COVID through vaccines. This is the primary thrust of the article; if you've vaccinated, you're very unlikely to have serious consequences. Two, we're fatigued. You just can't be constantly vigilant for two or three years without something breaking. This compounds point one. We don't, as the article mentions, know what kind of relat…

Minor correction: it's actually nearly a 2% chance of dying (1.7%), after Delta became the dominant variant. Folks never really upgraded their talking points but subjectively 2% feels _much_ higher than 1%.

Source? You are claiming that the IFR for COVID doubled between alpha and delta. You also didn't expand upon the numbers. Is the 2% death rate for fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated, unvaccinated? The three groups aren't remotely at the same risk. So which group has a 2% IFR from delta? Which nation released these stats? Where are they? And what about the asymptomatic cases which go undetected and are therefore not present in the denominator? Seroprevalence surveys have always indicated a gross underreporting of cases due to asymptomatics not pursuing tests.

I don't intend to be rude, but what you are stating is a huge deal, and should have been earth-shattering news in the media. A doubling of fatality for a pandemic is not something that fails to make it into talking points when governments across the world are struggling to convince people to get vaccinated.

Additionally, I live in the US state of Colorado. A few days ago, a post on HN's front page showed that Colorado's cases are now 100% omicron. That's not being addressed in your statement. Eventually, omicron will crowd out delta in other places as well.

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

#892

Post by layer8 »

Tycho wrote: post #844
layer8 wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What is your source for the claim that one usually becomes infectious before becoming aware of the infection from symptoms?

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/cor...

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

#893

Post by srcreigh »

giantg2 wrote: post #243
srcreigh wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only hard question is hospital triaging. Who gets treatment if there's only room for 50% or 20%? Who can even decide? Does anyone volunteer to be excluded from medical care? This affects more than just covid patients too. Any way we choose, it amounts to sacrificing XYZk people so we can go back to living a normal life. I don't think that's an exchange most people are willing to take. And yes, lockdown measures a…

Perhaps we should incentivize recruitment of, and reduce restrictions for, medical professionals. Things like residency availability, overhead from various requirements and restrictions, and a ton of upfront investment followed up with long hours and potentially decades to pay of debt. Something has to be done around capacity issues, or we'll be in the same situation indefinitely. Or even worse when the next pandemic…

It probably comes down to other things such as costs for medical equipment, legal medical malpractice liability, costs for training, investment in more facilities and equipment, etc.

I wonder if they have looked into it- not a new idea, China famously built a hospital early pandemic.

I do have the same questions as you though. How can we make this happen?

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

#894

Post by ipython »

mizzack wrote: post #246
afavour wrote: post #129

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…

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.

Ok great and all but the bigger problem is now the kids are home for a week - mild symptoms or not. You can’t send your COVID positive kids to daycare no matter how great they feel. The real tragedy here is the toll this takes on parents who otherwise could work full time.

Even if they never contract COVID, you still have to worry and plan around the unknowable - can I take that meeting two weeks from now? I may have to be home quarantining with my kids. And since by definition you don’t know when or if that will happen, you have no way to quell that anxiety. It just exists as constant background noise you never had before. It’s debilitating.

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

#895

Post by ChrisLomont »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #722
abrahamepton wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or perhaps it's a matter of personal principle. Personal conscience and conviction used to be held sacred in the US ... to the point that conscientious objectors wouldn't be forced to fight in wars It's a great argument, so long as "rejecting a vaccine during a pandemic" meets the same moral tests as "opposing war". In fact it does not, and so this "personal principle" is quite silly and actively harmful. The gover…

> It's a great argument, so long as "rejecting a vaccine during a pandemic" meets the same moral tests as "opposing war". In fact it does not You say this, but you don't name any criteria by which this judgment should be made. Could you elaborate?

Me opposing war doesn't kill my neighbor. Me opposing the war didn't kill 800,000 people. It didn't cause lifelong suffering for millions more.

It's not hard to understand the difference.

Why do the people that accept driving on the government mandated side of the road for public safety, who accept food being cooked to government standards for public safety, who have gotten the other multiple government mandated vaccines for public safety, who don't get into fights in stores for being required to wear shoes for public safety, who don't march against government mandated building codes for public safety, and so on for literally hundreds of items, suddenly obtain "personal liberty" for this particular vaccine, which has killed more Americans than any event in history?

Because they've been fed a constant stream of chaos from the grifters milking them, grifters that mostly got the vaccine themselves.

It's amazing what culture and virtue signaling can do.

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

#896

Post by sbierwagen »

layer8 wrote: post #535
StillBored wrote: post #389

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…

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…

This is true... if all indoor dining, bars and clubs are closed. If we're allowing people to eat indoors, by definition unmasked, then what's the point of wearing a N95 in a grocery store?

The US is doing a million new cases a day. Wearing a mask in some situations but not others is not going to make much of a difference. But it is a very visible thing to have partisan political fights about, which seems to be most of the appeal to many people.

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

#897

Post by jacquesm »

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #603
jacquesm wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not this cough. One of my children has this and he sounds more like his 86 year old uncle than a normal child, and it's been going on for ever , without much in terms of improvement. I really pity him. But I'm coughing just as bad...

I've not followed this aspect much. Certainly the virus has long since cleared. So, what is going on with the long-term lung involvement? Scarring?

I can't speak for my son but for me the trigger seems to be some damage at the back of my throat from the crazy bouts of coughing when I had COVID and now any kind of irritation there will set me off. Very frustrating, especially when you are chairing long meetings.

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

#898

Post by defaultprimate »

coryfklein wrote: post #864
defaultprimate wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> What if it turns out the vaccines do have negative long term effects This is like the inverse of Pascal's Wager [1]! "What if taking some action results in negative long term effects that we don't yet know about? Better not do anything new just to be safe." That reasoning could be applied to anything novel, and yet folks seem most ready to apply it to COVID-19 vaccination. The flu vaccine changes every year, but I'…

>Is there some reason why we would expect a priori for the COVID-19 vaccine to have a particularly high risk of adverse affects that only show up long-term?

The correct question is, is there sufficient evidence that we shouldn't? You don't ever assume the confirmation of a hypothesis (in this case long term safety) when introducing something novel. That's the exact opposite of science.

My answer is: I believe in science, empirical evidence, and hypothesis testing. I'm not going to assume the hypothesis that they're safe long term is correct without empirical evidence. You don't disrupt baseline systems with something novel on the basis of faith when no empirical evidence exists. That's completely antithetical to science.

It's funny because most of your examples are great illustrations that assuming novel things are safe has disastrous consequences.

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

#899

Post by Izkata »

coryfklein wrote: post #864
defaultprimate wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> What if it turns out the vaccines do have negative long term effects This is like the inverse of Pascal's Wager [1]! "What if taking some action results in negative long term effects that we don't yet know about? Better not do anything new just to be safe." That reasoning could be applied to anything novel, and yet folks seem most ready to apply it to COVID-19 vaccination. The flu vaccine changes every year, but I'…

> The flu vaccine changes every year, but I've never heard folks expressing concern of the long-term effects of this year's new formulation.

It's not a new formulation every year. They pick a few from a preexisting set of vaccines to try and get a best match to the strains they expect to be most prevalent in the coming flu season.

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

#900

Post by jacquesm »

hutzlibu wrote: post #676
jacquesm wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not this cough. One of my children has this and he sounds more like his 86 year old uncle than a normal child, and it's been going on for ever , without much in terms of improvement. I really pity him. But I'm coughing just as bad...

I hope you will all recover!

We've all recovered from COVID (2nd bout for me :(, apparently both a prior round and vaccine were not enough to stave it off completely but it was only a small fraction as bad as the first one).

It's just the cough that remains.

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