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Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

npr.org

211–220 of 437 posts

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#211

Isn't this an unnecessary medical procedure for people who have already recovered?

CDC says vaccines are still better: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/12157/ This paper says natural immunity better: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v... Unfortunately the science is evolving so fast and the variants are coming so fast, it's impossible to keep up!

If you can't figure out whether natural immunity or vaccines are more effective based on the information we have available, the problem is with you, not the science.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, the ZeroCovid ship has sailed. Vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission (1). All vaccines appear to do is to (hopefully) dull the severity of the infection once you've got it. Plus now we have animal reservoirs, and no way to vaccinate those. Edit: (1) Obviously we should talk about the degree of infection and transmission reduced by vaccines, and not in black/white terms. I haven't seen conclusive da…

Please stop spreading disinformation. Vaccines have been shown in many, many studies to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

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Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is due to the fact, that this is inherently undemocratic? SCOTUS ruled that mandatory vaccines are constitutional back in 1905. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts

The rationale in that case doesn't apply here: the COVID vaccines don't stop the spread of the virus. Because COVID vaccines can't actually stop the spread of the disease under any plausible level of vaccination (the R0 of the virus is too high), vaccines can serve only to safeguard the health of individuals, and we generally don't use heavy-handed nation-wide mandates to force people to do things that are merely goo…

We don’t need to eliminate transmission for the vaccines to be useful. My understanding is that they do meaningfully reduce transmission, even for Delta.

You are also missing another important factor. In addition to reducing transmission, the vaccines greatly reduce the chance of hospitalization, which together significantly reduces the peak load on the health system so that it continues to function well and serve non-COVID patients. In many areas, hospitals were nearing or at capacity due to the recent Delta surge.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#215
post #37
post #9

> but vaccine hesitancy — particularly among white Republicans This sort of quip really makes me distrust NPR. White people are more vaccinated than blacks or Latinos, but the journalist couldn't help but try to throw in a dunk on their favorite bogeyman. https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/percent-of-total-p...

"As you may know, an FDA-authorized vaccine for COVID-19 is now available for free to all adults in the U.S. Do you think you will...?" # Definitely not get the vaccine | white: 65%, hispanic: 13%, black: 13% # Wait and see | white: 50%, hispanic: 27%, black: 14% # Unvaccinated adults | white: 57%, hispanic: 20%, black: 13% "Partisanship also plays a major role with more than half (58%) of the “definitely not” group…

As others have pointed out, those numbers sum to 100% per question. Given population distributions, whites are less likely to be vaccine hesitant.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rationale in that case doesn't apply here: the COVID vaccines don't stop the spread of the virus. Because COVID vaccines can't actually stop the spread of the disease under any plausible level of vaccination (the R0 of the virus is too high), vaccines can serve only to safeguard the health of individuals, and we generally don't use heavy-handed nation-wide mandates to force people to do things that are merely goo…

We don’t need to eliminate transmission for the vaccines to be useful. My understanding is that they do meaningfully reduce transmission, even for Delta. You are also missing another important factor. In addition to reducing transmission, the vaccines greatly reduce the chance of hospitalization, which together significantly reduces the peak load on the health system so that it continues to function well and serve no…

I don't think reducing transmission matters that much as long as R_0 is above 1. If it's above 1, everyone is getting this thing.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#217
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine that there will be medical exceptions. I gather from the article that either get the shot or show your exception. Showing a negative test is not an option.

except a lot of doctors will be unwilling to give out medical exemptions because they are afraid to lose their license (even though they agree with the patient). It's happening here in Canada.

Happened to me.

Doctors gaslight me when I had an allergic reaction to Macrogol, claiming it was an anxiety attack while I could visibly feel myself suffocating to death. Did anyone bother to add it to my EHR? No.

Did anyone even add the allergies after I used the online portal to send a message to PAMF? No. Still in pending.

I keep on trying but somehow I keep getting doctors who don’t care or shift me from specialist to specialist since I’m apparently a case nobody wants to take.

I’m so tired of hearing ‘it’s safe and effective’ sometimes.

Should I go and get a shot that has a good chance of a giving me a life threatening reaction that may be fatal? (Oh and before you mention epinephrine, that’s also contraindicated; I have no faith that if it happens again, I’ll even end up alive considering I was left to just kind of suffer while nearly dying in the hospital ER not just once, but TWICE in the last few years).

I give up. I admit defeat.

Re: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers

#220
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your scientific basis for betting that Prof. Pollard is incorrect? Even though vaccination likely reduces the risk of transmission, we have no evidence that even a very high level of vaccination would be sufficient to reduce R0 below 1.0. It's impossible to reach 100% coverage and even countries with high vaccination levels are still experiencing uncontrolled community spread. We can flatten the curve to an e…

What evidence does he have of actual transmission? I want to see actual studies with humans with breakthrough infections giving infections to other humans. I'd like to see one contact tracing case where a breakthrough infection was the index patient that spread it to multiple people at a given venue. I've already posted studies which contradicts the idea that breakthrough infections are equivalent to unvaccinated inf…

This is not an argument by authority. There is strong evidence of significant Delta variant transmission by vaccinated people.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02187-1

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/effective...

https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.31.21261387

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