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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

#821

Post by WheatM »

tjr225 wrote: post #118
gibspaulding wrote: post #94

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] Granted it's less than the UK lost in WW1 alone, so it's perhaps more a testament to how few the US managed to loose in the world wars (compared to Europe), but it's still wild to realize. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1009819/total-us-militar...

I know this is going to sound conspiratorial but I think you’d have to be pretty naive to accept the reported deaths in the US due to Covid to be that accurate. Hospitals(which in the US are for profit mind you) were quite literally given more money for reporting a death as a Covid death for a period of time. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fac... Actually you could say it’s difficult to trus…

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

#822

Post by vmception »

Lets forget about everything divisive before omicron:

Cloth masks and omicron are pointless right guys?

It is less effective to the point of irrelevance for a virus that is less dangerous to the point of irrelevance

And we cant get N95s still so this is all theater to have said mandate.

Why/why not?

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

#823

Post by windexh8er »

listenallyall wrote: post #798
ipaddr wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Isn't that highly subjective, however? Two people show up to the hospital feeling equally lousy, both test positive for Omicron. First guy says he's vaxxed and boosted, doc suggests he's fully protected, this is the worst of it, go home and rest up (which is exactly what a doctor told my father). Second guy says nope, I'm unvaxxed. Doc is probably going to admit this guy overnight for observation. Multiply by tens of…

Except that with your second example the hospital isn't going to admit the patient for simply "feeling lousy". So, no, the assertion that this is how that stat has become inflated is not the actual cause.

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

#824

Post by jrockway »

coryfklein wrote: post #570
jrockway wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to comment a little on the "choice" thing. I'm not sure that every person who is unvaccinated chose that. I had to try very hard to get my three doses. For the first series, I had to go to a faraway FEMA-run site. For the booster, I scheduled three appointments with CVS; the first two times, they canceled my appointment on the walk over (I made the first like 3 weeks in advance, and they canceled with 10 min…

How long ago was that? I have to think the situation today is quite different from when the major vaccines were approved months ago, but I could be wrong.

I got my first dose early April, which was pretty late looking at the numbers. I found this vaccination site because a friend of mine from Nebraska found some New York representative talking about this particular site on Twitter. Guess it got a lot of reshares and trended or something. I signed up and got a slot many weeks in the future. (At the time, the major pharmacies didn't have any sort of working sign-up system. I thought about writing an elaborate scraper to immediately notify me of a slot, but decided that was unethical and didn't. Also, very boring.)

For my third dose, that was last month. I think I signed up for my ultimately-canceled appointment early December targeting a date before Christmas. I ended up getting the shot in the first week of January.

I felt like I had to devote a lot of mental energy to getting the vaccine much later than everyone else, looking at statistics. I totally believe that other people said "I like the vaccine, but fuck this shit" and that's why they're not vaccinated.

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

#825

Post by vmception »

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…

Horseshoe theory

Far right and far left reach the same behaviors for different reasons

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

#826

Post by kmonad »

nradov wrote: post #733
kmonad wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the hospital capacity is a key argument indeed. But there is another aspect to consider. Each viral replication is a potential event where a new variant can arise, thus the fewer viral replications the better since each new variant has unknown risks. An unvaccinated person will on average be host to many more viral replications after exposure to the virus than a vaccinated person after exposure. Thus, if a la…

I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated but this is unlikely to prevent new variants from evolving. The current thinking is that new variants are most likely to evolve in immunocompromised patients who experience prolonged infections. Vaccines are less effective for them. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma...

I agree with this, and I do not think it contradicts my original statement. You cannot prevent new variants, but you can reduce the rate of their emergence.

The paper you cite supports this: in a case study of a single immunocompromised patient who---because of that---had a prolonged infection, many replications of the virus were observed. This patient represents a "hot spot" of variant emergence in this furthermore antibody treated patients. From the article "the remaining samples [sic: most] are consistent with arising from a consistent viral population".

What I take from this is: we ought to prevent prolonged infections where it is possible. Again, from the article "The effects of convalescent plasma on virus evolution found here are unlikely to apply in immunocompetent hosts in whom viral diversity is likely to be lower owing to better immune control." And a vaccinated individual will on average have the best immune control.

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

#827

Post by rkk3 »

edanm wrote: post #341
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…

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.

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

Tobacco still causes 480K+ deaths a year in the US so saying covid is worse is a very strong claim.

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...

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

#828

Post by ipaddr »

AshleyGrant wrote: post #743
ipaddr wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflammation, memory loss, swollen lymph, chest pains, feeling sicks for months, no energy, trouble breathing. You thought the vaccines were risk free?

The ability for humans to focus on a vanishingly small risk of side-effects to justify taking a much larger risk by refusing to vaccinate is mind-boggling to me. It's the same argument that people use to justify not wearing a seat belt. "There's types of wrecks where being unbelted is actually safer!" Well, sure, but those are an extremely tiny portion of wrecks, and you're vastly safer in the vast, vast majority of…

Those are the major reported prizes. There are many more high tension, depressed, generally unwell, joints swelling winners with brain fog.

It's gamble, the next booster might be the one that gets you. And you'll need a booster because it only lasts a few months anyhow.

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

#829

Post by spookthesunset »

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 seemingly obvious thing to do would be to build some temporary capacity specifically for COVID patients.

Many states did exactly that back in march of 2020. Most of these temporary facilities were closed virtually unused.

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

#830

Post by boopmaster »

I am not sure why we have vaccine mandates that businesses are expected to audit for entry. That to me is absurd. I do not need to provide proof of MMR to enter a McDonalds. I am vaccinated and boosted, but the invasiveness in these requests is a little over the top. Regarding masks, well businesses do often require shirt and shoes for service. I fail to see where masks differ at all in that regard.
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