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Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

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Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#341

Post by edanm »

rglullis wrote: post #319
tynpeddler wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vaxxed and unvaxxed populations both rely on the same medical infrastructure. So when the unvaxxed fill hospitals to recover or die, they are consuming scarce resources that are required by the population at large for other things like birth, cancer, surgery, etc. Sadly, we don't have an ethical way to let all the unvaxxed get covid without impacting the medical system negatively for the rest of us.

Cigarette use kills 480000 people every year in the US alone. 300 billion dollars estimated to be spent per year with treatment of smoking-related illness. I don't want even to look at the numbers of the more critical epidemic on the US: obesity and metabolic diseases. By arguing that "the unvaxxed" are a burden and that they deserve discrimination, you are opening the gates for those arguing that smokers should be f…

I mean, that's a pretty decent comparison. Society has spent the last few decades encouraging people not to smoke, using everything from campaigns to actual laws that make it harder to smoke. This has caused smoking to go down a lot.

So in that sense, the response to COVID is similar - though on an accelerated time scale, because the epidemic is much worse.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#342

Post by 3glkjlkjlkg »

eli wrote: post #283
tzs wrote: post #30

Something from the NYT mailing list yesterday: > The Covid vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing serious illness. If you’re vaccinated, your chances of getting severely sick are extremely low. Even among people 65 and older, the combination of the vaccines’ effectiveness and the Omicron variant’s relative mildness means that Covid now appears to present less danger than a normal flu. > For the unvaccinated,…

Given the topic of the post, it's funny you didn't mention one measure that does convince holdouts to get vaccinated: mandates. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/01/22/do-vacci... ( https://archive.fo/g2vHF )

No post body was provided.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#343

Post by rtikulit »

akomtu wrote: post #285
tynpeddler wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vaxxed and unvaxxed populations both rely on the same medical infrastructure. So when the unvaxxed fill hospitals to recover or die, they are consuming scarce resources that are required by the population at large for other things like birth, cancer, surgery, etc. Sadly, we don't have an ethical way to let all the unvaxxed get covid without impacting the medical system negatively for the rest of us.

The same reasoning can be applied to obesity.

Obesity isn't exogenous, infectious or subject to exponential growth. Even a superficial consideration of the facts shows that analogies between obesity and covid are unsound.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#344

Post by walterbell »

tharne wrote: post #253
hatware wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention all of the vaccine injuries that do exist but are rarely reported on. It's almost like there's a narrative here.

> Not to mention all of the vaccine injuries that do exist but are rarely reported on. Source?

Oct 2021, https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/covid-vaccine-injur...

> More than 1,300 COVID vaccine-related injury claims are now pending before an obscure government tribunal ... Lawyers tell me the vaccine is so new that there’s virtually no definitive research on injury causation to cite ... In the meantime, people like McFadden face a strict one-year deadline from the date of vaccination to file a claim with the CICP.

Unproven causality, but here's a database of 2021-2022 news reports on heart issues in athletes (missing baseline numbers for prior years): https://airtable.com/shrbaT4x8LG8EbvVG/tbl7xKsSUIOPAa7Mx

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#345

Post by smnrchrds »

walterbell wrote: post #290
smnrchrds wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's also why many governments do not accept proof of recovery in lieu of proof of vaccination. Those who do have vaccine-skeptic people catching the virus intentionally and risking death. https://globalnews.ca/news/8524409/hana-horka-czech-singer-c...

Let's remember that the best case for vaccinated people is Covid recovery. Wilful ignorance of the best case would be unwise. https://cbs12.com/news/local/new-covid-variant-detected-in-a... > "Omicron is acting like a super booster," Unnasch said. "People who have gotten omicron are going to be really well protected against infection, not just disease moving forward, which is a really good sign."

The best case is never catching COVID again. Even vaccinated people put themselves at risk (albeit less than non-vaccinated people) if they catch COVID intentionally. No one recommends just going out there and catching COVID. But when proof of vaccination systems allow for it, some people do it anyway and some of them die instead.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2557/

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#346

Post by legitster »

tzs wrote: post #30

Something from the NYT mailing list yesterday: > The Covid vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing serious illness. If you’re vaccinated, your chances of getting severely sick are extremely low. Even among people 65 and older, the combination of the vaccines’ effectiveness and the Omicron variant’s relative mildness means that Covid now appears to present less danger than a normal flu. > For the unvaccinated,…

This seems to be the near consensus opinion of reasonable people I know. People are really downplaying how effective the vaccines have been. My one unvaccinated friend has stated several times that they would rather sign a waver denying themselves access to an ICU bed than get vaccinated. I don't know what we are waiting on as a society to reopen other than enough people to get it.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#347

Post by res0nat0r »

Good article here about "endemic" and the still large problems that portend: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00155-x

> The word ‘endemic’ has become one of the most misused of the pandemic. And many of the errant assumptions made encourage a misplaced complacency. It doesn’t mean that COVID-19 will come to a natural end.

> In other words, a disease can be endemic and both widespread and deadly. Malaria killed more than 600,000 people in 2020. Ten million fell ill with tuberculosis that same year and 1.5 million died. Endemic certainly does not mean that evolution has somehow tamed a pathogen so that life simply returns to ‘normal’.

> Stating that an infection will become endemic says nothing about how long it might take to reach stasis, what the case rates, morbidity levels or death rates will be or, crucially, how much of a population — and which sectors — will be susceptible. Nor does it suggest guaranteed stability: there can still be disruptive waves from endemic infections, as seen with the US measles outbreak in 2019. Health policies and individual behaviour will determine what form — out of many possibilities — endemic COVID-19 takes.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#348

Post by Nbox9 »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #313
tzs wrote: post #30

Something from the NYT mailing list yesterday: > The Covid vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing serious illness. If you’re vaccinated, your chances of getting severely sick are extremely low. Even among people 65 and older, the combination of the vaccines’ effectiveness and the Omicron variant’s relative mildness means that Covid now appears to present less danger than a normal flu. > For the unvaccinated,…

> I'd say the answer to that should be determined by the hospital capacity. If a region has sufficient hospital capacity that it would not be overwhelmed by the increase in COVID cases among the unvaccinated go ahead and lift most restrictions. Having anyone's freedoms dependent on available hospital capacity is a terrible way to run a society. Note that these freedoms were debated and won in an era where medicine wa…

I’d like to know that if I have a heart attack or get hit by a bus then I’ll have access to top quality healthcare —- not burnt out understaffed hospitals.

Sharing limited resources is a major role of the government, and managing hospital capacity seems to fall under “promote general welfare” to me.

My $0.02

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#349

Post by bluedino »

wk_end wrote: post #296
akomtu wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same reasoning can be applied to obesity.

...only if (and if only!) obesity were a problem that could be solved by a couple of quick, free shots at the local pharmacy.

It'd be interesting to see what big pharma could come up with in a year.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#350

Post by enchiridion »

malermeister wrote: post #301
enchiridion wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people really just don’t want an experimental vaccine which sidestepped the usual regulatory approval.

That talking point no longer works. The vaccine has been taken by billions of people by now and has a larger sample size proving its safety than any other medicine in the history of humanity.

Remains to be seen based on the outcome of longitudinal studies.

I have not seen a comprehensive general population safety study. I believe the last large scale safety studies are the ones used for EUA.

Would love to be proven wrong though. I’m assuming that if there was new good safety data it would be blasted from the roof tops, just like the ~95% effective number was after the phase 3 studies.

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