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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

#621

Post by thekashifmalik »

mplewis wrote: post #401
RedBeetDeadpool wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Herd immunity is for the herd. The US is where it is because we have individuals willing to fight for individual rights. If casualty of individuals is the cost to keep individuality in this country then I say let it be. The vaccinated are protected and therefore you are safe (assuming you are vaccinated). So why do you need to proselytize your doctrine on those around you? You're allowed your own opinions, chant your…

Quoted post unavailable.

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

#622

Post by notriddle »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #486
skillpass wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - I am worried about taking hospital capacity claims at face value though. From what I've seen, it was common for hospitals to report being overwhelmed even during flu seasons pre-covid. I wouldn't classify that level of 'overwhelmed' worthy of mandates upon society. I don't doubt that during these periods of time hospital resources are strained in some way, but there's a difference between this routine level…

The thing they don't always mention is that hospital capacity is always close to being overwhelmed, by design, because otherwise you're sitting around with a large amount of extraordinarily expensive idle hospital capacity. A small change is enough to go from "almost full" to "over capacity." The seemingly obvious thing to do would be to build some temporary capacity specifically for COVID patients. We've had quite a…

> The thing they don't always mention is that hospital capacity is always close to being overwhelmed, by design, because otherwise you're sitting around with a large amount of extraordinarily expensive idle hospital capacity. A small change is enough to go from "almost full" to "over capacity."

If that was true, it would not be okay. There needs to be enough capacity to handle unpredictable spikes in load. This can be described using the same sort of queueing theory that anyone legitimately operating at scale needs to worry about: you don't just track average latency, but also track tail latency.

Luckily, emergency hospital buildings are not "always close to be overwhelmed." Their staff is always close to being overwhelmed, but the buildings are not. Instead, they maintain a reserve capacity of temp nurses, who get called during brushfire season and New Year's Midnight to handle the unusually high load. They are paid well by the hourly wage, but don't get any benefits, and either have a second job or a retirement plan to carry them over the rest of the year.

Only this time, they were never sent home. And, since some of them are being forced to quit their jobs, they're demanding the benefits package, which is getting expensive.

Edit: and, of course, this all goes to crap once a brushfire happens on top of the pandemic

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

#623

Post by throwaway1777 »

ChrisClark wrote: post #609
ravar wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope this is sarcasm

If you were infected with the original strain, you'd have had less immunity to Delta than if you were vaccinated. The exact same thing for Delta vs Omicron. The mRNA vaccines give a broader immunization that covers more. That's not even up for debate, you're only pretending it is. I hope your comment is sarcasm.

This is wrong according to the CDC. Prior infection is better than the vaccine by itself but vaccine + prior infection is best. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2022/01/19/cdc-prior-c...

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

#624

Post by hutzlibu »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #541
avs733 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an extremely traumatic accident a week ago and came into a major city hospital as a level one trauma patient. I came in with absolutely no wait..ambulance directly to a trauma bay, no waiting, no clothing, no nothing. After about six hours they figure out I was not going to die and was relatively okay. Okay here means two broken legs not “walking around”. Half of the patients at this hospital had covid and I ha…

Is the explanation simply that so many nurses are being forced to isolate with Omicron? Since even vaccinated staff can still spread it, so they still take the tests often, and isolate for 2 weeks if positive.

"Is the explanation simply that so many nurses are being forced to isolate with Omicron?"

A explanation why people are frustrated, who work hard and intense, take all the risk - but only get low pay?

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

#625

Post by walterbell »

ChrisClark wrote: post #611
walterbell wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the CDC changed the definition of vaccine in Sept 2021, most vaccines were understood to provide sterilizing immunity against infection, not only "protection" against illness/death. Intramuscular/serum vaccines cannot stop respiratory infections, by definition. They are non-sterilizing. Only a nasal/mucosal vaccine or nasal infection can provide sterilizing immunity against a respiratory virus.

You rewriting history? The vaccine was never said to be 100% effective. Stop trying to twist reality to face your own political views.

A collection of headlines on vaccine efficacy, https://youtube.com/watch?v=TSZMtSPX3iE

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

#626

Post by wongarsu »

headmelted wrote: post #583
nu11ptr wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies in advance for getting on my soapbox, but this has been on my mind for a while. The way in which the media has gotten everyone to say "the unvaccinated" is a 'disease' against basic science (not even getting into the divisive nature of this). I would go as far as saying if you read any paper, study, or other that refers to the "unvaccinated" as a single cohort, you are reading vaccine propaganda, not scienc…

Not disagreeing with this (although my understanding is that there have been studies that show vaccination has been more effective), but how would you seperate the unvaccinated / previously-infected-and-recovered cohorts? Even by reconciling PCR testing data (which I imagine is incredibly patchy at best), you still would only know historically how many people tested positive (ignoring what is in all likelihood a majo…

If that data doesn't exist then that's just because it isn't tracked. Here in Germany if you test positive on a PCR test you have to quarantine for 14 days, then you get a proof of recovery which for 6 months you can use like a proof of vaccination (which you need for non-essential shops, gyms, etc when the 7-day incidence is too high, like right now). As a result, tracking numbers for the "recovered" cohort isn't a problem. Obviously the "unvaccinated" group will always contains some unknown number of recovered people we don't know about, but at large enough effect sizes that isn't a problem.

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

#627

Post by enchiridion »

joshuamorton wrote: post #416
enchiridion wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely is, but they’re addressing it from the wrong end. If the pandemic could be fixed by the government managing individual behavior we’d be done with it by now. Instead the government should be focused on expanding highly covid specific care capacity. That is by far a better way to spend the covid relief money than distributing it to sustain a nebulous lockdown. As far as I understand from talking with doct…

> Instead the government should be focused on expanding highly covid specific care capacity. That is by far a better way to spend the covid relief money than distributing it to sustain a nebulous lockdown. This is not something the government can do. It's not something anyone can do. What you're asking for (though you may not know it) is for their to suddenly be more nurses and medical practitioners. That's not a thi…

From what I’ve seen the current shortages are primarily due to lack of sufficient pay and firing nurses who don’t want to get vaccinated. Additionally it seems like current nurses are over qualified for covid care.

How long would it take to train someone from a nursing adjacent field to treat 95% of what they are likely to see when treating a covid patient? Is anyone even asking that question? If not, why not?

It seems like we’re willing to take drastic action when it comes to mandate public behavior, but not when it comes to reforming bureaucracies, processes, and regulations.

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

#628

Post by kube-system »

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…

Driving is a bad example. Almost any other public safety regulation is a better example; most of them apply to private property. Almost never do private companies get to "choose" to follow safety regulations. McDonalds must follow food safety regulations, construction companies must follow building codes, industrial companies must follow occupational health and safety standards, aircraft operators must follow FAA regulations, etc.

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

#629

Post by djmips »

nu11ptr wrote: post #610
buryat wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

simple numbers show that unvaccinated get covid at higher rates and the number of hospitalizations is higher which puts strain on the hospitals. If something happens to me I dont want an unvaccinated taking a spot I need.

Your comment could not illustrate my point better if you had tried

It doesn't illustrate your point. You, on your soapbox pretend you have it all figured out. You, on the side of science. But as some of the responses have shown, you haven't really thought it through. I agree however, that the media hasn't either. But when was that ever true?

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

#630

Post by sudosysgen »

chadash wrote: post #382
sudosysgen wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a trivial conclusion. Much has been written about it. Pfizer themselves have written they estimate 67 billion dollars in revenue each year from Paxlovid, which is way more than their vaccine revenues and it's not even close. If you want my back-of-the-napkin calculation, here it is. The cost of a generic Paxlovid course of treatment is around 40$. The cost of treatment, negotiated down by the government (and…

> Pfizer themselves have written they estimate 67 billion dollars in revenue each year from Paxlovid Source? I'm seeing estimates closer to 20-35B when I google "Paxlovid revenue"

You are right and I misread. I will edit my comment. That being said 20-35 billion are estimates for the current year, which are already close to projected revenue estimates for Pfizer (not BioNTech) from the vaccine.
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