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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

#661

Post by rkk3 »

DanBC wrote: post #595
rkk3 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It has killed more than 865,000 Americans > It looks like that's more Americans than have been killed in combat in all of the wars of the 20th century combined [1] Like all deaths tragic, but let's not pretend young men, effectively kids, dying in war is the same as elderly & chronically sick populations dying of disease.

> Like all deaths tragic, but let's not pretend young men, effectively kids, dying in war is the same as elderly & chronically sick populations dying of disease. Where elderly means > 40 and chronically sick includes "has a bit of high blood pressure".

> chronically sick includes "has a bit of high blood pressure".

The CDC says > 40% of US adults are obese (> 100 Million people!) and 13% of US adults have diabetes. If that's not a chronically sick population I don't know what is.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html [2] https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pdfs/data/statistics/national-d...

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

#662

Post by bink »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #623
ChrisClark wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It's been awhile since I read about that study but didn't it determine that previous infection provided better resistance to infection than vaccination without a booster, but that vaccination provided better resistance to serious illness and death?

Either way I find it weird that the study clearly shows vaccination + infection provides the best protection yet people are using this to argue that they don't need a vaccination at all.

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

#663

Post by creato »

benstrumental wrote: post #462
walterbell wrote: post #38

The media's binary separation of populations into vax and unvax is a false dichotomy. More causal factors would be represented by: 1. Covid-recovered 2. Vaccinated 3. Partly-vaccinated ( CDC reporting bundles #3 and #4. UK reports all 4 categories separately. #1 was already a high percentage in 2021 and is now higher due to Omicron. Edit: CDC estimated pre-Omicron #1 as 146 million people (as of Oct 2021), https://ww…

You may even split up (1) into omicron-recovered and other-variants-recovered , since recovering from omicron strain seems to give a stronger resistance against reinfection for both omicron and delta, whereas recovering from delta offers little reinfection resistance to omicron[1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/28/health/covid-omicron-anti...

This, along with a large number of other trends related to COVID (including vaccine effectiveness), can be simply explained by immunity just not being very long lasting (4-6 months?). The Delta wave predates Omicron by around that much time.

I think when all the dust settles around COVID, we're going to learn that both vaccines and "natural immunity" last 3-6 months, and that explains almost all of the noise and confusion about what "works" and what doesn't. And that also suggests that "herd immunity" was never a realistic goal, whether by vaccines or infection. Maybe some future vaccine can be developed which targets a different signal and can last longer.

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

#664

Post by nsxwolf »

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.

What do you mean by "broader"? The mRNA vaccines present the original spike protein to your immune system. A viral infection exposes you to the spike protein as well as every other piece of the virus.

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

#666

Post by ipaddr »

bonzini wrote: post #614
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…

> why are they so adamant to vaccinate those with prior infection Because the data shows they don't matter. This is the same thing as deaths due to covid vs. deaths while positive to covid. Sure some people might have been miscounted as covid deaths but actually died due to cancer/car accident/whatever. Despite this the excess deaths over the past two years is much higher than the number of covid deaths; thus showing…

Data has been showing 80/20 vaxed/non vaxed hospitalizations for this new variant. How does that change your worldview?

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

#667

Post by benjaminwootton »

partiallypro wrote: post #638
benjaminwootton wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other thing that needs bringing into the discussion is vulnerability. The average of death with Covid in the US is 80. If every healthy 30 year old and under in the US declined the vaccine, this would barely move the needle. They personally are not vulnerable and are not likely to end up in hospital. Reading this discussion, you would think that vaccinated = safe, unvaccinated = certain doom. Age is a much strong…

Age and also just health status in general, people with diabetes or heart issues are vulnerable; but to your point most of those vulnerable are now vaccinated.

My point was that triple jabbing the worlds healthy 5-30 year olds will not move the needle on hospital demand. They are simply not vulnerable to the disease in a significant way.

So sure, let’s discuss unvaxxed/1 shot/2 shot/boosted splits, but in the relevant population. To focus on 20 year olds is a red herring.

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

#668

Post by barbazoo »

walterbell wrote: post #277
barbazoo wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the hospital received a financial payment for classifying this as Covid-related treatment Can you explain this more? Surely a hospital doesn't just get money for simply classifying it. How does a hospital benefit from classifying someone's treatment as Covid related other than being paid for the necessary treatment?

There are probably better sources, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/cdc-director-acknowl... (Aug 2020) > U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield agreed that some hospitals have a monetary incentive to overcount coronavirus deaths as they do deaths for other diseases. “I think you’re correct in that we’ve seen this in other disease processes, too. Really, in the HIV epidemic, so…

There is very little substance on that page plus it's 18 months old and the other fact you posted isn't an incentive for hospitals. I really wonder if that's actually a thing.

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

#669

Post by Melatonic »

rory wrote: post #434
mbesto wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you are opening the gates for those arguing that smokers should be forced to stop smoking, or that obese people need to be forced to stricter diets. Honestly, then good, we should open that can of worms. > 300 billion dollars estimated to be spent per year with treatment of smoking-related illness. AFAIK this treatment doesn't include "clogging an ICU because these people are on ventilators". I could be wrong thoug…

I'd be interested to see a poll of pro-vaccine-mandate individuals asking these questions: 1. Should smoking be banned? (by smoker status) 2. Should obese people be forced by the government to restrict calories? (by obesity status) I honestly have no idea how it would go. Most people are more coy about those opinions.

Some countries are starting to ban smoking - look at New Zealand. Personally I am not against it specifically - if you are going to do some kind of extra harmful drug it might as well at least be one that is not so damn boring like Nicotine.

Obese people is a more complicated issue and I would argue that (at a societal level) it is an indicator of a larger social problem that is then causing the issue downstream just like other issues of addiction. I think we would be better off targeting that issue upstream.

That being said I do really like that in some countries (Japan, from what I hear) your general doctor can prescribe you basic things like "exercise". It must be painfully obvious to so many doctors out there that the best solution to some problems is to get the person actually moving more but instead they have to beat around the bush with after the fact duct tape type medical fixes.

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

#670

Post by nradov »

walterbell wrote: post #324
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…

There are operations research PhD's who use decades of aggregate demand data in dynamic pricing algorithms for the purpose of revenue and queue management in perishable services, e.g. software for pricing of airline seats, rental cars and hotel rooms. In countries with universal healthcare, price cannot be used for queue management, but the US isn't one of those countries. Did any hospital use queue management softwa…

Pricing is mostly fixed for at least a year at a time by contracts with payers (insurance companies), or by Medicare fee schedules. Hospitals have almost no legal flexibility to dynamically adjust prices based on demand.
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