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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

#931

Post by frickinLasers »

nradov wrote: post #764
frickinLasers wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covid has been something like ten times as deadly as the flu. I imagine those hospital beds put way more strain on the system as a whole than a bad flu season (see: ventilator sharing). I think any human with a shred of empathy for their tribe would agree, that this level of misery warranted collective action on the level of our response to measles, mumps, rubella, tuberculosis, diphtheria, pertussis... And though I…

Did you actually listen to that panel discussion I linked where several leading physicians explain what's been happening and the mistakes that have been made?

Given the amount of time between when you posted and when I replied, it's safe to say I hadn't listened to the three-hour conversation between two physicians and a professor. Initially I scrolled down, was put off by the stack of text and images/embeds with no clear organization, skimmed the Cliff's notes, and failed to understand how it correlated with "we didn't impose mandates or restrictions on the rest of society."

They make several good points about policy moving forward and vaccinating children, but they were disregarding Omicron before we even knew much about it. Their general position aged like milk, now that there are more people in the hospital with Covid than at any point in the pandemic. They complain about Fauci holding rigid positions, while my science-illiterate family complain that the rules keep changing/are confusing. None of this addresses the fact that masks and vaccines are consistent with past policy in America and have been more effective than nothing, at least as far as people complied, or that comparisons to the flu are a bit of a stretch.

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

#932

Post by nradov »

kmonad wrote: post #826
nradov wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We don't do anything to reduce the rate of emergence of new variants of HCoV-OC43, another betacoronavirus very similar to SARS-CoV-2 in terms of genetics and clinical effects. So far that hasn't been a problem.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026240792...

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

#933

Post by avs733 »

doitLP wrote: post #894
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…

Meanwhile my friend who is a nurse in the UCLA hospital complex says they’re so understaffed because they let so many people go/nurses retired or quit that all nurses are allowed to come to work if they’ve tested positive but their symptoms are improving

This is a perfect sign of what I’m talking about.

They fucked around with these people for so long that when they need them, actually need them, they aren’t there. They rolled the dice in an assumption that they held sufficient economic power to control them. Now they are left exposing patients to covid as a necessity to prevent their operations from completely ceasing.

That is failure by any other name.

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

#934

Post by marco_yolo »

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…

well said, the "unvaccinated" term is way to dehumanize real people.

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

#935

Post by thfuran »

mulletbum wrote: post #574
parkingrift wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Great! The problem is that vaccines don't protect society unless a critical-mass of people are vaccinated. They don't protect society at all. The herd immunity goal flew out the window with Delta and left the galaxy with Omicron. We will not ever eradicate Covid-19 with vaccination. >It ends when the the threat subsides. It should end right now, then. The threat has subsided. We have vaccines and other treatment pro…

"We will not ever eradicate Covid-19 with vaccination" is the most small minded statement possible to make. We have eradicated so many diseases with vaccination. I think what you mean to say is "We cannot eradicate COVID-19 with the current vaccines," but to swear off vaccines as if they can't do the work is frankly, dumb.

>We have eradicated so many diseases with vaccination.

We have eradicated exactly one human disease with vaccination.

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

#936

Post by thfuran »

crackercrews wrote: post #754
kajecounterhack wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the powerful can ignore their own rules, they're more likely to enact sweeping mandates. The sweeping mandates are for our public health. These folks aren't asking us to mask up or vaccinate for their own benefit. And they can only sorta ignore their own rules, because aren't they being roasted in the media when they mess up? The fourth estate at work. It will affect their re-election chances. > The problem is…

> nor did he conduct himself in the way a public servant held to a higher standard should No one is asking for a higher standard. > aren't they being roasted in the media when they mess up? The fourth estate at work Was there any coverage in NYT/CNN/WaPo of Biden shopping maskless? I only heard about it because I happened to read some news from a right-leaning site. > It will affect their re-election chances. I'm pre…

>No one is asking for a higher standard.

I am.

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

#937

Post by Vecr »

xadhominemx wrote: post #198
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot recall another example in my lifetime of a global populous all agreeing to purchase a pharmaceutical company's medical product - not just once, but 2-3x per person - in under two years' time. The implications of this phenomenon on Pfizer's business model are enormous. Pfizer & others would be foolish to not pay close attention to this and figure out a way to exploit it for further gains.

> I cannot recall another example in my lifetime of a global populous all agreeing to purchase a pharmaceutical company's medical product - not just once, but 2-3x per person - in under two years' time. Well this is the first major global pandemic in a century, so that would stand to reason, no? Most of the world received the polio vaccine within a few years of its discovery btw

The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines was far faster than Salk's polio vaccine. It was not used in lower income countries for quite a while, really until OPV came along to really get going. The vaccine was made by multiple manufacturers in the US, including what is now Pfizer.

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

#938

Post by wutbrodo »

lwkl wrote: post #729
dahfizz wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the data shows they don't matter. Source? Because the CDC says otherwise. > In the first full week of October, vaccinated New Yorkers with a prior Covid-19 case were 19.8 times less likely to catch the virus than their unvaccinated and uninfected peers, whereas people who were unvaccinated but previously infected were 14.7 times less likely, and vaccinated but uninfected New Yorkers were just 4.5 times less…

The person you are replying to is talking about hospitalizations for severe ilness. The study you are quoting is talking about covid infections in general. These two are not the same and the vaccine protects from the former (severe illness and death).

No, he's also talking about severe illness and death. He's saying that prior infection is a good substitute for the vaccine in preventing severe illness and death. The corollary being that we should consider "vaxed or prior infection" and "immunologically naive" as the two relevant groups (for mandates etc), not "vaxed" and "unvaxed".

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

#939

Post by nradov »

frickinLasers wrote: post #931
nradov wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you actually listen to that panel discussion I linked where several leading physicians explain what's been happening and the mistakes that have been made?

Given the amount of time between when you posted and when I replied, it's safe to say I hadn't listened to the three-hour conversation between two physicians and a professor. Initially I scrolled down, was put off by the stack of text and images/embeds with no clear organization, skimmed the Cliff's notes, and failed to understand how it correlated with "we didn't impose mandates or restrictions on the rest of societ…

Actually, their general position has aged very well and has been proven largely correct. They consistently recommended vaccination for the majority of people with perhaps a few very limited exceptions. You should listen to the follow up panel discussion in which noted infectious disease expert Dr. Monica Gandhi explains why mask mandates are bad policy.

https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/

https://profiles.ucsf.edu/monica.gandhi

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

#940

Post by ceras »

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…

Suddenness still applies if it continues to come in waves like Omicron. If the waves are spaced far enough apart, the extra capacity is hard/expensive to plan for. Omicron came very suddenly after a long period of little activity (and is already leaving almost as fast in much of the US).

Importantly, COVID can make hospital staff sick, which is one way it takes up capacity. I'd read that in the hospitals that hit capacity issues during Omicron, they wouldn't have had any capacity problems if staff weren't sick from Omicron. So, the capacity challenge is having enough personnel slack to cover the suddenness, which seems harder than handling equipment/room capacity issues.

That said, I agree with your points and we need clear answers to those questions.

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