Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

ntdca.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

921–930 of 1001 posts

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

#921

Post by hutzlibu »

spookthesunset wrote: post #840
jstarfish wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you cannot just build another doctor, if you need one. So take your pool of existing NPs and give them a temporary promotion.

Or anything like that. It's an emergency, right? So what about people in medical school who have yet to be licensed? Grab them and have them do stuff. Retired doctors? Go get them. Whatever. It's an emergency. Get creative. You don't need things perfect. You need things to work. It's an emergency. Every second you aren't focused on solving overwhelmed healthcare is a second you are stealing from people through lockdo…

"So what about people in medical school who have yet to be licensed? Grab them and have them do stuff. Retired doctors? Go get them. Whatever. It's an emergency. Get creative"

Would you prefer a student, or a seasoned doctor to decide on you - if you are in a critical condition in the hospital?

But sure, I would take any advanced med student over being ignored while in need of care. And since this is not rocket science, here in germany all the retired doctors, trained military medic, ... have been registered and contacted in the beginning - to be ready if needed, but as far as I know, it was not made use of (much?).

And YES. It should have been invested massivly in healthcare in the beginning of the crisis and it was. But mainly just in infrastructure it seems. Or high level corruption.

Because today there are de facto fewer hospital beds avaiable, than in the beginning - because apparently it was not invested enough in the people. The ordinary health workers. They are leaving burned out.

For a short amount of time, you can enlist lots of reserve stuff so to say. But not for years.

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

#922

Post by jasondigitized »

nu11ptr wrote: post #571
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,…

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…

Do we apply this same thinking to the flu? If I have had the flu before I shouldn’t be encouraged to get a flu shot? Seems easier for everyone to just get the flu shot than figure out if I have had the flu before and then maybe get a flu shot. What am I missing?

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

#923

Post by yucky »

dekhn wrote: post #154
yucky wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we already know there has been a huge increase in the deaths of black children [1] [1] https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2022/01/25/chi...

I am only interested in serious results from quantitative medical biology researchers related specifically to viral infection, not secondary causes. Also quotes from the newspaper article already point out some of the effects predate covid and thus couldn't have been caused by it.

>related specifically to viral infection, not secondary causes.

You can't separate the two. The governments response to the pandemic needs to be analyzed, and the huge increase in deaths among black children as a direct result of their policies in regards to the virus, and not due to the virus itself, means those deaths were preventable with a less authoritarian response.

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

#924

Post by nomel »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #531
temp0826 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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

"Stop" and "slow" are very different things and cannot be used interchangeable, if you want to keep your point clear.

And, Omicron is not Delta. Omicron is the current pandemic. Vaccines slows the spread, but keeps its R0 well into the "everyone on earth will probably get it" range.

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

#925

Post by jasondigitized »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #496
rsynnott wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are unvaccinated hospitalizations significantly worse compared to other personal decisions (diet, exercise, risky hobbies). I mean, clearly, yes. Those, in themselves, never (or at least virtually never) cause sudden exhaustion of hospital capacity. Now, many covid cases, particularly unvaccinated cases, have some sort of lifestyle problem as a comorbidity, but that's not really the point.

It's not obvious to me. As an example, lets say hospitals have a capacity of 100, 40 of the capacity is generally taken up by non-lifestyle factors, 40 is taken up by various lifestyle factors (things that could have reasonably been avoided from a better diet, exercise, or otherwise), and the remainder is left as buffer. Now, lets say covid takes up 25 capacity, which now overflows hospitals by demanding 105 capacity…

It’s a question and a calculation of the CFOs of health care organizations whether or not they want to make major investments and if those investment will provide a high rate of return 5-10 years from now. This is no different than energy companies avoiding build new power plants by giving people rebates and credits for reducing power. Instead, in the short term they are “asking” you to spend more time waiting in the ER or for surgery and asking health care workers to work harder. They were and are really hoping that Covid goes away so they can continue to make astronomical amount of profit and keep there NPS and Glint surveys somewhat above the gutter.

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

#926

Post by nomel »

chaostheory wrote: post #917
nomel wrote: post #908

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in the West are so anti-mask. It's been two years since I've gotten sick with anything. For one data point, I'm vaccinated, had Omicron, and am now "anti-mask", as in, I think they are more harmful to me than not wearing a mask. The vaccines/boosters only target one protein, of 28. I want periodic exposure to all the proteins, to keep my immunity up and minimize my risk for now and future variants. Of course, I wea…

> I want periodic exposure to all the proteins, to keep my immunity up and minimize my risk for now and future variants. I think this makes sense to say now that the new variants are becoming less and less lethal. At the same time, this sounds similar to anti-vaccine arguments.

> At the same time, this sounds similar to anti-vaccine arguments.

I don't see how, since I didn't mention vaccination. Vaccination for initial immunity reduces the risk incredibly, with boosters reducing it even more. Also, it would be very unlikely that all all anti-vaccine arguments are wrong, since that would require the vaccines to be risk free and perfect. We know they aren't, since people have died directly from vaccination, and it's failing in trials for young children. But, the relative risk is mostly negligible compared to the the actual disease, for almost all.

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

#927

Post by ipaddr »

stormbrew wrote: post #878
ipaddr wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you worried you won't have care at a hospital because of someone is unvaccinated? Has that ever happened? Are hospitals full where you live? Where did you get a fear like that?

Sorry what? Yes, this has happened many times in many regions during this pandemic. If anything, as governments lean more and more into "let's just call it endemic and give into anti-vaxxers," it's happening more. And to make it concrete: where I live we're into emergency (as in, stretching the system past its limits) ICU capacity and elective procedures (which, please note, does not mean optional) have been cancelle…

I don't know where you live but they cancelled those things here as well. Not because of the unvaxed but because 30% of nurses who are triple vaxxed were down with covid.

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

#928

Post by walterbell »

diamondo25 wrote: post #890
animal_spirits wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what they are suggesting is that natural immunity + vaccine is also more protective than just natural immunity

But natural immunity doesn't work if you die or end up having severe loss of health, so vaccine + natural immunity would be best way.

CDC said last October that 146 million people (~40%) in the US have already recovered from Covid.

There are also interventions other than vaccines, e.g. early treatment, https://c19early.com

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

#929

Post by tamaharbor »

Why are people so afraid of something that has less than 0.01% of killing them? I am living my life as normally as I can, yet I am unvaccinated and rarely ever wear a mask. I feel mankind has handled this poorly, and has created many more unnecessary problems. I wish more people would join me, living life to its fullest. This thing will only be over when WE decide it is.

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

#930

Post by systemvoltage »

systemvoltage wrote: post #649
deegles wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With COVID becoming endemic everyone is going to get antibodies Vaccines provide better protection than infection, just to be clear. It's not true that you're safe because of a previous infection. See: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr...

No they don't, indisputably now. See the massive 15 million people study from CDC Jan'2022 paper and here is an article that summarizes it: https://thepulse.one/2022/01/24/cdc-admits-the-obvious-natur...

Actual paper published on Jan 19, 2022: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
Post reply on HN