Viruses / Vaccines 2

tbergs

nicknyr15 said:

static111 said:

tbergs said:

Yikes! These 2 are complete scum and trashy people. The one is married to a cop too. No way he didn't know what she was doing. These are the type of people who should be sentenced to life in prison. Man, some people are just evil.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/29/long-island-nurses-charged-with-faking-covid-jabs-to-earn-more-than-1point5-million.html

Remember when everyone jumped on nicky and said this wasn't happening on a large scale?  Well this isn't the only case of forging certificates, just the first case of healthcare pros getting caught.

That said I don't see this as evil or worthy of a lifelong imprisonment.

Exactly. Life in prison? Lol. You should see what people get away with here in NYC. This certainly doesn’t deserve a life sentence. Cmon. 

They manipulated the system and committed ungodly amounts of fraud and forgery. Even just using 1 million as their profit and calculating they made it all off of adults, that is at least 4,500 people they did this for! Sure, small percentage of the NYC population, but quite the racket. Those people also suck, but fuck these nurses. White collar criminals usually get off easily, but they shouldn't. I can't imagine committing the same crime 4,500 times. Fine, not life imprisonement, but sentenced to a life of community service after being stripped of their credentials.

Merkin Baller

static111 said:

tbergs said:

Yikes! These 2 are complete scum and trashy people. The one is married to a cop too. No way he didn't know what she was doing. These are the type of people who should be sentenced to life in prison. Man, some people are just evil.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/29/long-island-nurses-charged-with-faking-covid-jabs-to-earn-more-than-1point5-million.html

Remember when everyone jumped on nicky and said this wasn't happening on a large scale?  Well this isn't the only case of forging certificates, just the first case of healthcare pros getting caught.

That said I don't see this as evil or worthy of a lifelong imprisonment.

If it is happening on that large of a scale, then the vaccination rates are out the window. 

nicknyr15

Merkin Baller said:

static111 said:

tbergs said:

Yikes! These 2 are complete scum and trashy people. The one is married to a cop too. No way he didn't know what she was doing. These are the type of people who should be sentenced to life in prison. Man, some people are just evil.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/29/long-island-nurses-charged-with-faking-covid-jabs-to-earn-more-than-1point5-million.html

Remember when everyone jumped on nicky and said this wasn't happening on a large scale?  Well this isn't the only case of forging certificates, just the first case of healthcare pros getting caught.

That said I don't see this as evil or worthy of a lifelong imprisonment.

If it is happening on that large of a scale, then the vaccination rates are out the window. 

Absolutely agree. 

JeBurkhardt

Go Beavers said:

mrussel1 said:

Go Beavers said:

lastexitlondon said:

To be clear i have  had 3 vaccines. Im in no way anti fuck all . And yes its saved lives but I'm  wondering why the non transparency  . Lets see it all and make our adult minds up and for our children  
 Thats all. This place is fuckin ridiculous  and  narrow

Here’s more details on the trials from Pfizer. 146 pages. 

https://cdn.pfizer.com/pfizercom/2020-11/C4591001_Clinical_Protocol_Nov2020.pdf#page93

146 pages??  When I said I want to do my own research, I meant through a podcast.  

Maybe someone can condense it into a meme?

How about a Tweet?

OnWis97

Merkin Baller said:

static111 said:

tbergs said:

Yikes! These 2 are complete scum and trashy people. The one is married to a cop too. No way he didn't know what she was doing. These are the type of people who should be sentenced to life in prison. Man, some people are just evil.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/29/long-island-nurses-charged-with-faking-covid-jabs-to-earn-more-than-1point5-million.html

Remember when everyone jumped on nicky and said this wasn't happening on a large scale?  Well this isn't the only case of forging certificates, just the first case of healthcare pros getting caught.

That said I don't see this as evil or worthy of a lifelong imprisonment.

If it is happening on that large of a scale, then the vaccination rates are out the window. 

Also, does this mean that some of the vaxxed that are dying are actually "fraud-vaxxed?" (or maybe blood tests reveal the truth either way?)

Halifax2TheMax

From the NYT email blast. Show me the science!

View in browser|nytimes.com

Continue reading the main story

 

 

January 31, 2022

Good morning. New C.D.C. data shows the power of boosters.

 

Preparing vaccines in Rochester Hills, Mich.Emily Elconin for The New York Times

Irrational skepticism 

The C.D.C. has begun to publish data on Covid outcomes among people who have received booster shots, and the numbers are striking:

Based on 25 U.S. jurisdictions. | Source: C.D.C.

As you can see, vaccination without a booster provides a lot of protection. But a booster takes somebody to a different level.

This data underscores both the power of the Covid vaccines and their biggest weakness — namely, their gradual fading of effectiveness over time, as is also the case with many other vaccines. If you received two Moderna or Pfizer vaccine shots early last year, the official statistics still count you as “fully vaccinated.” In truth, you are only partially vaccinated.

Once you get a booster, your risk of getting severely ill from Covid is tiny. It is quite small even if you are older or have health problems.

The average weekly chance that a boosted person died of Covid was about one in a million during October and November (the most recent available C.D.C. data). Since then, the chances have no doubt been higher, because of the Omicron surge. But they will probably be even lower in coming weeks, because the surge is receding and Omicron is milder than earlier versions of the virus. For now, one in a million per week seems like a reasonable estimate.

That risk is not zero, but it is not far from it. The chance that an average American will die in a car crash this week is significantly higher — about 2.4 per million. So is the average weekly death rate from influenza and pneumonia — about three per million.

With a booster shot, Covid resembles other respiratory illnesses that have been around for years. It can still be nasty. For the elderly and immunocompromised, it can be debilitating, even fatal — much as the flu can be. The Omicron surge has been so terrible because it effectively subjected tens of millions of Americans to a flu all at once.

For the unvaccinated, of course, Covid remains many times worse than the flu.

‘Heartbreaking’

I’m highlighting these statistics because there is still a large amount of vaccine skepticism in the U.S. I have heard it frequently from readers in the past week, after our poll on Covid attitudes and partisanship, as well as the “Daily” episode about the poll.

This vaccine skepticism takes two main forms. The more damaging form is the one that’s common among Republicans. They’re so skeptical of vaccines — partly from misinformation coming from conservative media figures and Republican politicians — that many remain unvaccinated.

Look at this detail from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest portrait of vaccination: Incredibly, there are more unvaccinated Republican adults than boosted Republican adults.

 

From a survey of 1,536 adults in Jan. 2022. | Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

This lack of vaccination is killing people. “It’s cost the lives of people I know, including just last week a friend of 35 years, a person I met on one of the first weekends of my freshman year of college,” David French, a conservative writer who lives in Tennessee, wrote in The Atlantic. “I can’t tell you how heartbreaking it is to see person after person fall to a virus when a safe and effective shot would have almost certainly not just saved their life but also likely saved them from even having a serious case of the disease.”

Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine, estimates that in the second half of last year, 200,000 Americans needlessly lost their lives because they refused Covid vaccines. “Three doses of either Pfizer or Moderna will save your life,” Hotez told me. “It’s the only way you can be reasonably assured that you will survive a Covid-19 infection.” (Young children, who are not yet eligible for the vaccines, are also highly unlikely to get very sick.)

The vaccines don’t prevent only death. Local data shows the risks of hospitalization are extremely low, too. Vaccination also reduces the risk of long Covid to very low levels.

Healthy and anxious

The second form of vaccine skepticism is among Democrats — although many would recoil at any suggestion that they are vaccine skeptics. Most Democrats are certainly not skeptical about getting a shot. But many are skeptical that the vaccines protect them.

About 41 percent of Democratic voters say they are worried about getting “seriously sick” with Covid, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last week. That’s a very high level of anxiety for a tiny risk.

Here’s the proof that much of the fear is irrational: Young Democrats are more worried about getting sick than old Democrats, even though the science says the opposite should be true.

 

From a survey of 1,536 adults in Jan. 2022. | Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

The most plausible explanation for this pattern is political ideology. Younger Democrats are significantly more liberal than older Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center (and other pollsters, too). Ideology tends to shape Covid views, for a complex mix of often irrational reasons. The more liberal you are, the more worried about Covid you tend to be; the more conservative you are, the less worried you tend to be.

I know that many liberals believe an exaggerated sense of personal Covid risk is actually a good thing, because it pushes the country toward taking more precautions. Those precautions, according to this view, will reduce Covid’s death toll, which truly is horrific right now. In a later newsletter this week, I will consider that argument.

For now, I’ll simply echo the many experts who have pleaded with Americans to get vaccinated and boosted.

Answers and convenience

What might help increase the country’s ranks of vaccinated? Vaccine mandates, for one thing — although many Republican politicians, as well as the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, oppose broad mandates. Private companies can still impose mandates on their employees and customers.

Without mandates, the best hope for increased vaccination is probably community outreach. While many unvaccinated Americans are firmly opposed to getting a shot, others — including some Democrats and independents — remain agnostic. If getting a vaccination is convenient and a nurse or doctor is available to answer questions, they will consider it.

“I cannot count how many people I’ve spoken to about the Covid vaccine who have been like, ‘No, I don’t think so. No,’” Dr. Kimberly Manning of Emory University told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Then I run into them two weeks later and they tell me they got vaccinated.”

Related: “You have to scratch your head and say, ‘How the heck did this happen?’” Dr. Anthony Fauci told Michael Barbaro on today’s episode of “The Daily,” about the partisan gap in Covid attitudes. Fauci also predicted that people who were anxious about Covid would become less so as caseloads fell.

In Times Opinion, James Martin, a Jesuit priest, argues that schadenfreude over vaccine skeptics’ suffering warps the soul.

THE LATEST NEWS

The Virus

• A mutated version of Omicron could slow the decline in cases, but probably won’t create a surge.

• For those with medical conditions, the latest wave has still posed a threat.

• Spotify said it would add an “advisory” to virus-related content, and the podcaster Joe Rogan said he would try to include more experts. 

• To-go drinks were a rare pandemic crowd-pleaser in New York. But liquor stores would like them to end. 

mickeyrat

mrussel1 said:

nicknyr15 said:

static111 said:

tbergs said:

Yikes! These 2 are complete scum and trashy people. The one is married to a cop too. No way he didn't know what she was doing. These are the type of people who should be sentenced to life in prison. Man, some people are just evil.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/29/long-island-nurses-charged-with-faking-covid-jabs-to-earn-more-than-1point5-million.html

Remember when everyone jumped on nicky and said this wasn't happening on a large scale?  Well this isn't the only case of forging certificates, just the first case of healthcare pros getting caught.

That said I don't see this as evil or worthy of a lifelong imprisonment.

Exactly. Life in prison? Lol. You should see what people get away with here in NYC. This certainly doesn’t deserve a life sentence. Cmon. 

It will be interesting if they go after the people that paid them for the fake shot.  I bet there's a log.... there's always a log. 

back trace from the agency they reported to. would assume folks name are listed there.

fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.

Spiritual_Chaos

The Government and the Swedish Public Health Agency are currently conducting a dialogue on how long covid-19 should be classified as a socially dangerous disease.And there may be a change soon.

This is what state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell tells Expressen.

- We talk mostly days, weeks. It should not have to take longer than that, he says.

bootlegger10

I don’t think anti-vaxxers doubt so much that the vaccine’s don’t work, but rather that the vaccines themselves do harm and the odds are worse to get an issue from the vaccine versus the virus. 

Some certainly deny the vaccines work, but studies on the effectiveness of the vaccine aren’t going to change the minds of anti-vaxxers.  They want safety information on the side effects of the vaccine.

brianlux

bootlegger10 said:

I don’t think anti-vaxxers doubt so much that the vaccine’s don’t work, but rather that the vaccines themselves do harm and the odds are worse to get an issue from the vaccine versus the virus. 

Some certainly deny the vaccines work, but studies on the effectiveness of the vaccine aren’t going to change the minds of anti-vaxxers.  They want safety information on the side effects of the vaccine.

I do often wonder what goes on in the mind of anti-vaxxers, where do they get their information, what leads them to believe the way they do?  The biggest question I wonder about is, How many of them are anti-vax simply based on their political choice and why do they make a health decision based on their "team", whatever it may be?

jerparker20

bootlegger10 said:

I don’t think anti-vaxxers doubt so much that the vaccine’s don’t work, but rather that the vaccines themselves do harm and the odds are worse to get an issue from the vaccine versus the virus. 

Some certainly deny the vaccines work, but studies on the effectiveness of the vaccine aren’t going to change the minds of anti-vaxxers.  They want safety information on the side effects of the vaccine.

As a person with a family full of anti-vaxxers, this isn’t even fully true. At this point, you could provide these people with all the safety info you want, they arent changing their minds. To do so would require them to admit they were wrong and hoodwinked by those they have decided to align their beliefs with. Death is a more acceptable outcome than to omit they were wrong or fooled.

cincybearcat

brianlux said:

bootlegger10 said:

I don’t think anti-vaxxers doubt so much that the vaccine’s don’t work, but rather that the vaccines themselves do harm and the odds are worse to get an issue from the vaccine versus the virus. 

Some certainly deny the vaccines work, but studies on the effectiveness of the vaccine aren’t going to change the minds of anti-vaxxers.  They want safety information on the side effects of the vaccine.

I do often wonder what goes on in the mind of anti-vaxxers, where do they get their information, what leads them to believe the way they do?  The biggest question I wonder about is, How many of them are anti-vax simply based on their political choice and why do they make a health decision based on their "team", whatever it may be?

I have the same wonder but even more so about anti-maskers...  Where do they get their information....why are they too stupid to find good research when "doing their own research"...

tempo_n_groove

Halifax2TheMax said:

From the NYT email blast. Show me the science!

View in browser|nytimes.com

Continue reading the main story

 

 

January 31, 2022

Good morning. New C.D.C. data shows the power of boosters.

 

Preparing vaccines in Rochester Hills, Mich.Emily Elconin for The New York Times

Irrational skepticism 

The C.D.C. has begun to publish data on Covid outcomes among people who have received booster shots, and the numbers are striking:

Based on 25 U.S. jurisdictions. | Source: C.D.C.

As you can see, vaccination without a booster provides a lot of protection. But a booster takes somebody to a different level.

This data underscores both the power of the Covid vaccines and their biggest weakness — namely, their gradual fading of effectiveness over time, as is also the case with many other vaccines. If you received two Moderna or Pfizer vaccine shots early last year, the official statistics still count you as “fully vaccinated.” In truth, you are only partially vaccinated.

Once you get a booster, your risk of getting severely ill from Covid is tiny. It is quite small even if you are older or have health problems.

The average weekly chance that a boosted person died of Covid was about one in a million during October and November (the most recent available C.D.C. data). Since then, the chances have no doubt been higher, because of the Omicron surge. But they will probably be even lower in coming weeks, because the surge is receding and Omicron is milder than earlier versions of the virus. For now, one in a million per week seems like a reasonable estimate.

That risk is not zero, but it is not far from it. The chance that an average American will die in a car crash this week is significantly higher — about 2.4 per million. So is the average weekly death rate from influenza and pneumonia — about three per million.

With a booster shot, Covid resembles other respiratory illnesses that have been around for years. It can still be nasty. For the elderly and immunocompromised, it can be debilitating, even fatal — much as the flu can be. The Omicron surge has been so terrible because it effectively subjected tens of millions of Americans to a flu all at once.

For the unvaccinated, of course, Covid remains many times worse than the flu.

‘Heartbreaking’

I’m highlighting these statistics because there is still a large amount of vaccine skepticism in the U.S. I have heard it frequently from readers in the past week, after our poll on Covid attitudes and partisanship, as well as the “Daily” episode about the poll.

This vaccine skepticism takes two main forms. The more damaging form is the one that’s common among Republicans. They’re so skeptical of vaccines — partly from misinformation coming from conservative media figures and Republican politicians — that many remain unvaccinated.

Look at this detail from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest portrait of vaccination: Incredibly, there are more unvaccinated Republican adults than boosted Republican adults.

 

From a survey of 1,536 adults in Jan. 2022. | Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

This lack of vaccination is killing people. “It’s cost the lives of people I know, including just last week a friend of 35 years, a person I met on one of the first weekends of my freshman year of college,” David French, a conservative writer who lives in Tennessee, wrote in The Atlantic. “I can’t tell you how heartbreaking it is to see person after person fall to a virus when a safe and effective shot would have almost certainly not just saved their life but also likely saved them from even having a serious case of the disease.”

Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine, estimates that in the second half of last year, 200,000 Americans needlessly lost their lives because they refused Covid vaccines. “Three doses of either Pfizer or Moderna will save your life,” Hotez told me. “It’s the only way you can be reasonably assured that you will survive a Covid-19 infection.” (Young children, who are not yet eligible for the vaccines, are also highly unlikely to get very sick.)

The vaccines don’t prevent only death. Local data shows the risks of hospitalization are extremely low, too. Vaccination also reduces the risk of long Covid to very low levels.

Healthy and anxious

The second form of vaccine skepticism is among Democrats — although many would recoil at any suggestion that they are vaccine skeptics. Most Democrats are certainly not skeptical about getting a shot. But many are skeptical that the vaccines protect them.

About 41 percent of Democratic voters say they are worried about getting “seriously sick” with Covid, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last week. That’s a very high level of anxiety for a tiny risk.

Here’s the proof that much of the fear is irrational: Young Democrats are more worried about getting sick than old Democrats, even though the science says the opposite should be true.

 

From a survey of 1,536 adults in Jan. 2022. | Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

The most plausible explanation for this pattern is political ideology. Younger Democrats are significantly more liberal than older Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center (and other pollsters, too). Ideology tends to shape Covid views, for a complex mix of often irrational reasons. The more liberal you are, the more worried about Covid you tend to be; the more conservative you are, the less worried you tend to be.

I know that many liberals believe an exaggerated sense of personal Covid risk is actually a good thing, because it pushes the country toward taking more precautions. Those precautions, according to this view, will reduce Covid’s death toll, which truly is horrific right now. In a later newsletter this week, I will consider that argument.

For now, I’ll simply echo the many experts who have pleaded with Americans to get vaccinated and boosted.

Answers and convenience

What might help increase the country’s ranks of vaccinated? Vaccine mandates, for one thing — although many Republican politicians, as well as the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, oppose broad mandates. Private companies can still impose mandates on their employees and customers.

Without mandates, the best hope for increased vaccination is probably community outreach. While many unvaccinated Americans are firmly opposed to getting a shot, others — including some Democrats and independents — remain agnostic. If getting a vaccination is convenient and a nurse or doctor is available to answer questions, they will consider it.

“I cannot count how many people I’ve spoken to about the Covid vaccine who have been like, ‘No, I don’t think so. No,’” Dr. Kimberly Manning of Emory University told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Then I run into them two weeks later and they tell me they got vaccinated.”

Related: “You have to scratch your head and say, ‘How the heck did this happen?’” Dr. Anthony Fauci told Michael Barbaro on today’s episode of “The Daily,” about the partisan gap in Covid attitudes. Fauci also predicted that people who were anxious about Covid would become less so as caseloads fell.

In Times Opinion, James Martin, a Jesuit priest, argues that schadenfreude over vaccine skeptics’ suffering warps the soul.

THE LATEST NEWS

The Virus

• A mutated version of Omicron could slow the decline in cases, but probably won’t create a surge.

• For those with medical conditions, the latest wave has still posed a threat.

• Spotify said it would add an “advisory” to virus-related content, and the podcaster Joe Rogan said he would try to include more experts. 

• To-go drinks were a rare pandemic crowd-pleaser in New York. But liquor stores would like them to end. 

I don't know if I can get my boost if I recently got covid?  I'll have to ask my doctor about that.

static111

brianlux said:

bootlegger10 said:

I don’t think anti-vaxxers doubt so much that the vaccine’s don’t work, but rather that the vaccines themselves do harm and the odds are worse to get an issue from the vaccine versus the virus. 

Some certainly deny the vaccines work, but studies on the effectiveness of the vaccine aren’t going to change the minds of anti-vaxxers.  They want safety information on the side effects of the vaccine.

I do often wonder what goes on in the mind of anti-vaxxers, where do they get their information, what leads them to believe the way they do?  The biggest question I wonder about is, How many of them are anti-vax simply based on their political choice and why do they make a health decision based on their "team", whatever it may be?

Bri I think you would find it has less to do with politics and teams than you think the idea that anti vax is a right or left issue is a new belief brought about by Covid.  Most of the anti vax people I know are organic living planet saving composting amazon boycotting recyclers like me, they just have a complete disconnect when it comes to vaccines and medicine for a reason unknown to me.  This is why I brought up my frustration with Joni in the other thread..I really believe that it has been a slow process with little bits of bad info adding up over time rather than a firehose of madness since Covid became the new normal.
jerparker20 said:

bootlegger10 said:

I don’t think anti-vaxxers doubt so much that the vaccine’s don’t work, but rather that the vaccines themselves do harm and the odds are worse to get an issue from the vaccine versus the virus. 

Some certainly deny the vaccines work, but studies on the effectiveness of the vaccine aren’t going to change the minds of anti-vaxxers.  They want safety information on the side effects of the vaccine.

As a person with a family full of anti-vaxxers, this isn’t even fully true. At this point, you could provide these people with all the safety info you want, they arent changing their minds. To do so would require them to admit they were wrong and hoodwinked by those they have decided to align their beliefs with. Death is a more acceptable outcome than to omit they were wrong or fooled.

Yep I can agree with this 100%  they have gone so far it would break their minds to be wrong.  I deal with some friends and family that believe this stuff as well.

static111

cincybearcat said:

brianlux said:

bootlegger10 said:

I don’t think anti-vaxxers doubt so much that the vaccine’s don’t work, but rather that the vaccines themselves do harm and the odds are worse to get an issue from the vaccine versus the virus. 

Some certainly deny the vaccines work, but studies on the effectiveness of the vaccine aren’t going to change the minds of anti-vaxxers.  They want safety information on the side effects of the vaccine.

I do often wonder what goes on in the mind of anti-vaxxers, where do they get their information, what leads them to believe the way they do?  The biggest question I wonder about is, How many of them are anti-vax simply based on their political choice and why do they make a health decision based on their "team", whatever it may be?

I have the same wonder but even more so about anti-maskers...  Where do they get their information....why are they too stupid to find good research when "doing their own research"...

Its not a stupidity thing anything that counters their confirmation biases is put out by "them" "the Man" whatever and their sources are the "experts" that are really on the side of humanity.  It's more of a psychological problem than them being stupid.  Using my life as an example most of the Anti vaxxers I know are very smart thoughtful and intelligent, just not on one subject.

tempo_n_groove

static111 said:

cincybearcat said:

brianlux said:

bootlegger10 said:

I don’t think anti-vaxxers doubt so much that the vaccine’s don’t work, but rather that the vaccines themselves do harm and the odds are worse to get an issue from the vaccine versus the virus. 

Some certainly deny the vaccines work, but studies on the effectiveness of the vaccine aren’t going to change the minds of anti-vaxxers.  They want safety information on the side effects of the vaccine.

I do often wonder what goes on in the mind of anti-vaxxers, where do they get their information, what leads them to believe the way they do?  The biggest question I wonder about is, How many of them are anti-vax simply based on their political choice and why do they make a health decision based on their "team", whatever it may be?

I have the same wonder but even more so about anti-maskers...  Where do they get their information....why are they too stupid to find good research when "doing their own research"...

Its not a stupidity thing anything that counters their confirmation biases is put out by "them" "the Man" whatever and their sources are the "experts" that are really on the side of humanity.  It's more of a psychological problem than them being stupid.  Using my life as an example most of the Anti vaxxers I know are very smart thoughtful and intelligent, just not on one subject.

Ever talk to a 9/11 conspiracy theorist?  Same thing.  Smart, down to earth but when confronted about 9/11?  Mr Hyde comes out...

Halifax2TheMax

tempo_n_groove said:

Halifax2TheMax said:

From the NYT email blast. Show me the science!

View in browser|nytimes.com

Continue reading the main story

 

 

January 31, 2022

Good morning. New C.D.C. data shows the power of boosters.

 

Preparing vaccines in Rochester Hills, Mich.Emily Elconin for The New York Times

Irrational skepticism 

The C.D.C. has begun to publish data on Covid outcomes among people who have received booster shots, and the numbers are striking:

Based on 25 U.S. jurisdictions. | Source: C.D.C.

As you can see, vaccination without a booster provides a lot of protection. But a booster takes somebody to a different level.

This data underscores both the power of the Covid vaccines and their biggest weakness — namely, their gradual fading of effectiveness over time, as is also the case with many other vaccines. If you received two Moderna or Pfizer vaccine shots early last year, the official statistics still count you as “fully vaccinated.” In truth, you are only partially vaccinated.

Once you get a booster, your risk of getting severely ill from Covid is tiny. It is quite small even if you are older or have health problems.

The average weekly chance that a boosted person died of Covid was about one in a million during October and November (the most recent available C.D.C. data). Since then, the chances have no doubt been higher, because of the Omicron surge. But they will probably be even lower in coming weeks, because the surge is receding and Omicron is milder than earlier versions of the virus. For now, one in a million per week seems like a reasonable estimate.

That risk is not zero, but it is not far from it. The chance that an average American will die in a car crash this week is significantly higher — about 2.4 per million. So is the average weekly death rate from influenza and pneumonia — about three per million.

With a booster shot, Covid resembles other respiratory illnesses that have been around for years. It can still be nasty. For the elderly and immunocompromised, it can be debilitating, even fatal — much as the flu can be. The Omicron surge has been so terrible because it effectively subjected tens of millions of Americans to a flu all at once.

For the unvaccinated, of course, Covid remains many times worse than the flu.

‘Heartbreaking’

I’m highlighting these statistics because there is still a large amount of vaccine skepticism in the U.S. I have heard it frequently from readers in the past week, after our poll on Covid attitudes and partisanship, as well as the “Daily” episode about the poll.

This vaccine skepticism takes two main forms. The more damaging form is the one that’s common among Republicans. They’re so skeptical of vaccines — partly from misinformation coming from conservative media figures and Republican politicians — that many remain unvaccinated.

Look at this detail from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest portrait of vaccination: Incredibly, there are more unvaccinated Republican adults than boosted Republican adults.

 

From a survey of 1,536 adults in Jan. 2022. | Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

This lack of vaccination is killing people. “It’s cost the lives of people I know, including just last week a friend of 35 years, a person I met on one of the first weekends of my freshman year of college,” David French, a conservative writer who lives in Tennessee, wrote in The Atlantic. “I can’t tell you how heartbreaking it is to see person after person fall to a virus when a safe and effective shot would have almost certainly not just saved their life but also likely saved them from even having a serious case of the disease.”

Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine, estimates that in the second half of last year, 200,000 Americans needlessly lost their lives because they refused Covid vaccines. “Three doses of either Pfizer or Moderna will save your life,” Hotez told me. “It’s the only way you can be reasonably assured that you will survive a Covid-19 infection.” (Young children, who are not yet eligible for the vaccines, are also highly unlikely to get very sick.)

The vaccines don’t prevent only death. Local data shows the risks of hospitalization are extremely low, too. Vaccination also reduces the risk of long Covid to very low levels.

Healthy and anxious

The second form of vaccine skepticism is among Democrats — although many would recoil at any suggestion that they are vaccine skeptics. Most Democrats are certainly not skeptical about getting a shot. But many are skeptical that the vaccines protect them.

About 41 percent of Democratic voters say they are worried about getting “seriously sick” with Covid, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last week. That’s a very high level of anxiety for a tiny risk.

Here’s the proof that much of the fear is irrational: Young Democrats are more worried about getting sick than old Democrats, even though the science says the opposite should be true.

 

From a survey of 1,536 adults in Jan. 2022. | Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

The most plausible explanation for this pattern is political ideology. Younger Democrats are significantly more liberal than older Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center (and other pollsters, too). Ideology tends to shape Covid views, for a complex mix of often irrational reasons. The more liberal you are, the more worried about Covid you tend to be; the more conservative you are, the less worried you tend to be.

I know that many liberals believe an exaggerated sense of personal Covid risk is actually a good thing, because it pushes the country toward taking more precautions. Those precautions, according to this view, will reduce Covid’s death toll, which truly is horrific right now. In a later newsletter this week, I will consider that argument.

For now, I’ll simply echo the many experts who have pleaded with Americans to get vaccinated and boosted.

Answers and convenience

What might help increase the country’s ranks of vaccinated? Vaccine mandates, for one thing — although many Republican politicians, as well as the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, oppose broad mandates. Private companies can still impose mandates on their employees and customers.

Without mandates, the best hope for increased vaccination is probably community outreach. While many unvaccinated Americans are firmly opposed to getting a shot, others — including some Democrats and independents — remain agnostic. If getting a vaccination is convenient and a nurse or doctor is available to answer questions, they will consider it.

“I cannot count how many people I’ve spoken to about the Covid vaccine who have been like, ‘No, I don’t think so. No,’” Dr. Kimberly Manning of Emory University told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Then I run into them two weeks later and they tell me they got vaccinated.”

Related: “You have to scratch your head and say, ‘How the heck did this happen?’” Dr. Anthony Fauci told Michael Barbaro on today’s episode of “The Daily,” about the partisan gap in Covid attitudes. Fauci also predicted that people who were anxious about Covid would become less so as caseloads fell.

In Times Opinion, James Martin, a Jesuit priest, argues that schadenfreude over vaccine skeptics’ suffering warps the soul.

THE LATEST NEWS

The Virus

• A mutated version of Omicron could slow the decline in cases, but probably won’t create a surge.

• For those with medical conditions, the latest wave has still posed a threat.

• Spotify said it would add an “advisory” to virus-related content, and the podcaster Joe Rogan said he would try to include more experts. 

• To-go drinks were a rare pandemic crowd-pleaser in New York. But liquor stores would like them to end. 

I don't know if I can get my boost if I recently got covid?  I'll have to ask my doctor about that.

Yup, I’d ask your doctor as I heard or read, and it could be wrong, probably, but I thought if you were fully vaxxed and contracted covid, you were supposed to or were encouraged to wait 90 days from your positive test and have no symptoms of covid before getting boosted. But what do I know? I’m just a monkey on the interwebs.

OnWis97

cincybearcat said:

brianlux said:

bootlegger10 said:

I don’t think anti-vaxxers doubt so much that the vaccine’s don’t work, but rather that the vaccines themselves do harm and the odds are worse to get an issue from the vaccine versus the virus. 

Some certainly deny the vaccines work, but studies on the effectiveness of the vaccine aren’t going to change the minds of anti-vaxxers.  They want safety information on the side effects of the vaccine.

I do often wonder what goes on in the mind of anti-vaxxers, where do they get their information, what leads them to believe the way they do?  The biggest question I wonder about is, How many of them are anti-vax simply based on their political choice and why do they make a health decision based on their "team", whatever it may be?

I have the same wonder but even more so about anti-maskers...  Where do they get their information....why are they too stupid to find good research when "doing their own research"...

Critical thinking is dead. I have seen, more than once, a meme (I dunno...maybe not a meme by definition) of a grocery cashier behind the plexiglass and it says "Plexiglass protecting you from the cashier that's touching every item you're buying." And people fall all over themselves talking about how crazy it is that we do this. It doesn't take much "research" to figure out that the virus is airborne and therefore, the space between you and the cashier is far more important than their hands on the merchandise. But critical thought is so far dead that they can't even get to that very basic piece.

(Not to mention that it says the plexiglass isn't protecting you from the cashier. Because these self-centered dummies can't even think about that it might be also protecting the cashier from their dumb asses...not to mention that the cashier is going to be interacting with the rest of us after they check out these self-centered boobs.

jerparker20

A couple of reading recommendations:

Our Own Worst Enemy by Tom Nichols and
Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Metzl

bbiggs

Halifax2TheMax said:

From the NYT email blast. Show me the science!

View in browser|nytimes.com

Continue reading the main story

 

 

January 31, 2022

Good morning. New C.D.C. data shows the power of boosters.

 

Preparing vaccines in Rochester Hills, Mich.Emily Elconin for The New York Times

Irrational skepticism 

The C.D.C. has begun to publish data on Covid outcomes among people who have received booster shots, and the numbers are striking:

Based on 25 U.S. jurisdictions. | Source: C.D.C.

As you can see, vaccination without a booster provides a lot of protection. But a booster takes somebody to a different level.

This data underscores both the power of the Covid vaccines and their biggest weakness — namely, their gradual fading of effectiveness over time, as is also the case with many other vaccines. If you received two Moderna or Pfizer vaccine shots early last year, the official statistics still count you as “fully vaccinated.” In truth, you are only partially vaccinated.

Once you get a booster, your risk of getting severely ill from Covid is tiny. It is quite small even if you are older or have health problems.

The average weekly chance that a boosted person died of Covid was about one in a million during October and November (the most recent available C.D.C. data). Since then, the chances have no doubt been higher, because of the Omicron surge. But they will probably be even lower in coming weeks, because the surge is receding and Omicron is milder than earlier versions of the virus. For now, one in a million per week seems like a reasonable estimate.

That risk is not zero, but it is not far from it. The chance that an average American will die in a car crash this week is significantly higher — about 2.4 per million. So is the average weekly death rate from influenza and pneumonia — about three per million.

With a booster shot, Covid resembles other respiratory illnesses that have been around for years. It can still be nasty. For the elderly and immunocompromised, it can be debilitating, even fatal — much as the flu can be. The Omicron surge has been so terrible because it effectively subjected tens of millions of Americans to a flu all at once.

For the unvaccinated, of course, Covid remains many times worse than the flu.

‘Heartbreaking’

I’m highlighting these statistics because there is still a large amount of vaccine skepticism in the U.S. I have heard it frequently from readers in the past week, after our poll on Covid attitudes and partisanship, as well as the “Daily” episode about the poll.

This vaccine skepticism takes two main forms. The more damaging form is the one that’s common among Republicans. They’re so skeptical of vaccines — partly from misinformation coming from conservative media figures and Republican politicians — that many remain unvaccinated.

Look at this detail from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest portrait of vaccination: Incredibly, there are more unvaccinated Republican adults than boosted Republican adults.

 

From a survey of 1,536 adults in Jan. 2022. | Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

This lack of vaccination is killing people. “It’s cost the lives of people I know, including just last week a friend of 35 years, a person I met on one of the first weekends of my freshman year of college,” David French, a conservative writer who lives in Tennessee, wrote in The Atlantic. “I can’t tell you how heartbreaking it is to see person after person fall to a virus when a safe and effective shot would have almost certainly not just saved their life but also likely saved them from even having a serious case of the disease.”

Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine, estimates that in the second half of last year, 200,000 Americans needlessly lost their lives because they refused Covid vaccines. “Three doses of either Pfizer or Moderna will save your life,” Hotez told me. “It’s the only way you can be reasonably assured that you will survive a Covid-19 infection.” (Young children, who are not yet eligible for the vaccines, are also highly unlikely to get very sick.)

The vaccines don’t prevent only death. Local data shows the risks of hospitalization are extremely low, too. Vaccination also reduces the risk of long Covid to very low levels.

Healthy and anxious

The second form of vaccine skepticism is among Democrats — although many would recoil at any suggestion that they are vaccine skeptics. Most Democrats are certainly not skeptical about getting a shot. But many are skeptical that the vaccines protect them.

About 41 percent of Democratic voters say they are worried about getting “seriously sick” with Covid, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last week. That’s a very high level of anxiety for a tiny risk.

Here’s the proof that much of the fear is irrational: Young Democrats are more worried about getting sick than old Democrats, even though the science says the opposite should be true.

 

From a survey of 1,536 adults in Jan. 2022. | Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

The most plausible explanation for this pattern is political ideology. Younger Democrats are significantly more liberal than older Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center (and other pollsters, too). Ideology tends to shape Covid views, for a complex mix of often irrational reasons. The more liberal you are, the more worried about Covid you tend to be; the more conservative you are, the less worried you tend to be.

I know that many liberals believe an exaggerated sense of personal Covid risk is actually a good thing, because it pushes the country toward taking more precautions. Those precautions, according to this view, will reduce Covid’s death toll, which truly is horrific right now. In a later newsletter this week, I will consider that argument.

For now, I’ll simply echo the many experts who have pleaded with Americans to get vaccinated and boosted.

Answers and convenience

What might help increase the country’s ranks of vaccinated? Vaccine mandates, for one thing — although many Republican politicians, as well as the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, oppose broad mandates. Private companies can still impose mandates on their employees and customers.

Without mandates, the best hope for increased vaccination is probably community outreach. While many unvaccinated Americans are firmly opposed to getting a shot, others — including some Democrats and independents — remain agnostic. If getting a vaccination is convenient and a nurse or doctor is available to answer questions, they will consider it.

“I cannot count how many people I’ve spoken to about the Covid vaccine who have been like, ‘No, I don’t think so. No,’” Dr. Kimberly Manning of Emory University told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Then I run into them two weeks later and they tell me they got vaccinated.”

Related: “You have to scratch your head and say, ‘How the heck did this happen?’” Dr. Anthony Fauci told Michael Barbaro on today’s episode of “The Daily,” about the partisan gap in Covid attitudes. Fauci also predicted that people who were anxious about Covid would become less so as caseloads fell.

In Times Opinion, James Martin, a Jesuit priest, argues that schadenfreude over vaccine skeptics’ suffering warps the soul.

THE LATEST NEWS

The Virus

• A mutated version of Omicron could slow the decline in cases, but probably won’t create a surge.

• For those with medical conditions, the latest wave has still posed a threat.

• Spotify said it would add an “advisory” to virus-related content, and the podcaster Joe Rogan said he would try to include more experts. 

• To-go drinks were a rare pandemic crowd-pleaser in New York. But liquor stores would like them to end. 

I wonder why this fails to touch on the science of those that were fully vaccinated, later had a "breakthrough" case, therefore having a full two-shot vaccination plus natural immunity, and what a booster or lack thereof does for that group.  That information was made available in the most recent CDC data, but is seldom talked about.  It seems that the message continues to be "get boosted" as a one size fits all approach, regardless of prior infection.