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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

#531

Post by shepherdjerred »

temp0826 wrote: post #339
donohoe wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm vaccinated and boostered by my own choice Great! The problem is that vaccines don't protect society unless a critical-mass of people are vaccinated. The estimate for COVID-19 is that roughly 70% to 85% of the population will need to be vaccinated to reach the herd immunity threshold. USA is at about 63% fully vaccinated (76% had at least one dose). where does it end? It ends when the the threat subsides. Why this…

>> The problem is that vaccines don't protect society unless a critical-mass of people are vaccinated. I'm having a harder and harder time believing this (that herd immunity is actually possible) considering that the vaccine does nothing to stop it from spreading. (Am vaxed and caught it, fwiw)

> considering that the vaccine does nothing to stop it from spreading.

Completely untrue. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01575-4

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

#532

Post by jokethrowaway »

e40 wrote: post #366
theandrewbailey wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 hate this casting of the issue as "freedom". It's absurd. My "freedom" to live because I have a medical issue but cannot get treatment will be severely impacted if hospitals are overrun with patients and worn out workers. See, we can both play the "freedom" game.

Your example is a transaction between people (the doctor and you). You don't have a right to that transaction. The other party can withdraw for whatever reason (including not having time).

The freedom to roam is freedom. I understand the point you're trying to make, but the parent comment is correct in the usage of the world freedom, whether you like it or not.

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

#533

Post by TMWNN »

reallyagain wrote: post #472
scarmig wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is perilously close to "people who get COVID are innocent victims so forcible interventions are justified, while people who got HIV chose to do it so those same nterventions are less justified." I agree that, for the average person, COVID is easier to contract than HIV. But by the same token, COVID is much less severe than HIV, even with modern treatment plans. It's not at core about some abstract principle abou…

> But by the same token, COVID is much less severe than HIV, even with modern treatment plans. Do you have a source for this? This wouldn't surprise me for the Omicron variant, but I'm surprised that (for example) someone getting the Delta variant in 2021 was "much less severe" than someone getting HIV in 2021.

COVID19 has, since the beginning, had a 0.6% IFR. The odds of someone under 40 without comorbodities dying of it were and are more or less zero.

HIV was and is invariably fatal. Yes, current drug regimens are remarkably effective. They are also very complex, required for the rest of your life, and do not affect the odds of you infecting someone else by unprotected sex.

*No one*, not even the most ill centenarian, would choose HIV over COVID19 if required to be infected by one.

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

#534

Post by Domenic_S »

hbn wrote: post #400
throwaway6734 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you opposed to laws mandating seatbelts or criminalizing heroine?

Yes to both of those things. The government shouldn't get to take money from me because I endangered myself.

You think not wearing a seatbelt only endangers you?

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

#535

Post by greysphere »

notch656a wrote: post #412
e40 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do it all the time. You are mandated to get a license to drive a car so that you don't have a higher chance of killing people.

Not on private property you don't need a license. Similarly, a business on private property should be able to dictate a mask or vaccination isn't required. You shouldn't have a right to dictate what kind of consensual conduct happens on private property. In Texas, I can get hammered, drive a car drunk without a license behind a fence 10 feet next to the highway (property-side). And there's not a damn thing you can le…

Obviously you should be able to be unvaccinated only on private property then...

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

#536

Post by lliamander »

mattigames wrote: post #335
rglullis wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Smokers, obese people and metabolic diseases are not filling up hospitales at the unsustainable rate unvaxxed people are; and none of those can be quickly fixed with a pinch in the arm, not even nicotine addiction.

And most of the people (vaxxed or not) who need critical care with COVID have those pre-existing conditions.

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

#537

Post by someguy5344523 »

webdood90 wrote: post #241
someguy5344523 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it looks like the vaccines don't stop the spread of covid: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/

The point is to reduce critical cases that cause hospital visits. Our system is overwhelmed as is. The fact that this still needs to be explained 2 years into this is ridiculous.

If the system is overwhelmed, then hospitals shouldn't have fired workers who didn't want to get vaccinated.

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

#538

Post by peytoncasper »

xadhominemx wrote: post #183
andrewclunn wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a Republican who has not gotten vaccinated, yes.

Before COVID vaccines, Republicans on average trusted pharma way more than Democrats. In general, distrust in pharma is the effect, not the cause, of anti-vax sentiment. I don’t know what’s going on in your specific case. I suspect you are comparing the health risk of vax to not vax, instead of the risk of vax to COVID, which is the comparison you should be making since everyone is going to get omicron eventually, bu…

As someone who struggled as well to put myself in the mindset and having just finished reading Empire of Pain which documents the Sackler Family and Purdue's responsibility in the opioid epidemic.

It might be worth reading through it to view a mindset that has developed around pharmaceutical companies and doctors in places that were hit the hardest by the opioid epidemic such as mining towns, old industry towns and other rural areas that are predominately Republican.

They may vote Republican, but I think its fair to say that its likely not the image that first comes to your mind when talking about pro-business, well off Republicans.

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

#539

Post by jokethrowaway »

yibg wrote: post #394
theandrewbailey wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Freedoms aren’t considered in isolation. Maintaining freedom for some means removing freedom for others some times. In this case the “freedom” to get timely treatment for those that need it.

> In this case the “freedom” to get timely treatment for those that need it.

That's not freedom, that's an entitlement.

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

#540

Post by nicoburns »

rory wrote: post #376
GavinMcG wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Various groups may disproportionately take up health resources, but the risk we're talking about is acutely overwhelming health systems.

This is definitely the most pressing issue, but shouldn't we also, as a society, build the ability to e.g. double ICU capacity when needed? We're not talking about 100x here. As much as I support vaccination, it feels like gaps in vaccination are also used as an excuse to blow off repairing an extremely fragile public health system. We've had two years at this point.

Two years doesn't seem like very long to double ICU capacity. How are you going to staff them? Nursing degrees take 3 years. Medical degrees much longer. And capacity to train doctors and nurses is also stretched by the pandemic and non-trivial to expand.

I do agree that this is something governments ought to be looking into over the long term though.

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