The NBA’s Anti-Vaxxers Are Trying to Push Around the League—And It’s Working

[thecampster]

2 minutes ago, AHF said:

I know they are not counted but I would also count people who die because they can't get access to ICU, etc. because they are overcrowded due to the unvaccinated sucking up resources.  It must be unbelievably traumatic to hear that no hospital can take your spouse who is suffering a heart attack because they are full of unvaccinated Covid patients.  

Not a hypothetical as we are seeing that in action.

 

That is way too deep for most people to fully grasp but one of the better points made here. Its common but something that should be stated and mentioned to others.

Get the shots, your chances of hospitalization go down dramatically which in turn saves hospital resources for others.  A very important and often glossed over point.

[marco102]

1 minute ago, thecampster said:

That is way too deep for most people to fully grasp but one of the better points made here. Its common but something that should be stated and mentioned to others.

Get the shots, your chances of hospitalization go down dramatically which in turn saves hospital resources for others.  A very important and often glossed over point.

I believe this is starting circulate more and that's the message we should push for people and get the conversation leaning towards that.

[thecampster]

Unrelated note of the insanity around Covid and the shot.  I know a lady who got vaccinated but didn't want anyone to know because many of her friends are antivaxx.

[JeffS17]

2 minutes ago, thecampster said:

Unrelated note of the insanity around Covid and the shot.  I know a lady who got vaccinated but didn't want anyone to know because many of her friends are antivaxx.

I've seen this as well -- I've heard of multiple people coming in and not wanting the physicians to share with their spouses that they are getting the vaccine because of the political stigma / conspiracies created around it... super sad and just shows that even if the best argument is "individual choice" or individual freedom, cultural surroundings and peer pressure are playing a huge part.  

[JeffS17]

7 minutes ago, thecampster said:

That is way too deep for most people to fully grasp but one of the better points made here. Its common but something that should be stated and mentioned to others.

Get the shots, your chances of hospitalization go down dramatically which in turn saves hospital resources for others.  A very important and often glossed over point.

To add to @AHF point, there is complete and utter burnout in the medical field right now.  We cannot keep medical assistants on staff and people are not responding to incentive pay.  We are offering more than double time in some markets and nurses still refuse to pick up open shifts.  Healthcare professionals are absolutely burned out and dealing with really aggressive patients daily.  Staff getting assaulted by patients, yelling at doctors, calling them hoaxes and worse, constant disruption in the facilities... emergency rooms are packed, etc. etc.  Things are rough on the ground if you work in healthcare.  

[JeffS17]

3 hours ago, thecampster said:

For the sake of sidebar arguments, lets keep this conversation to facts and not spin.  The COVID death toll is much lower to the COVID "related" death toll. That one word is important.  COVID by itself hasn't killed near as many as COVID + other conditions (like cancer, immuno compromised, etc). In a country of 300 million...600,000 dead is 1 in 500 but we can't say specifically how many of those were COVID and how many were COVID + other conditions.  Its triggering for some when those stats are thrown out there.  Its enough we should all give a crap, but we should always deal in facts when trying to win over hold outs.  Feeling they're being lied to is why most hold outs exists. Always deal in facts to win over the doubters. You won't win them all but you will turn off more than you win if there's any possible holes in your stats.

This is a really good point in that most Covid-19 deaths have comorbidities, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are fatal, and it also doesn't make the statistic "wrong".  This is one of the things I struggled with early on when discussing Covid-19's severity, but I've since come to terms with.  You can see in the graph below total deaths in the US by year.  There's a small increase yearly through 2019 as our population grows and ages, but then in 2020 there's an obvious spike up.  The spike up is ~575K deaths in the year.  There is A LOT of noise baked into this number that is not necessarily Covid-related (population growth, aging population, hospitals being at capacity, shutdowns leading to mental health issues, etc. etc.).  BUT I would say -- subjectively -- this is a great barometer for the total effect the pandemic has had on mortality.  The 575K is actually far greater than the 350K deaths reported for the year in the United States.  This would actually suggest quite the opposite -- that we're under-reporting (makes sense politically) of deaths related to Covid.  You can see in this article the CDC only reported 340K deaths for 2020 related to the pandemic.

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2020-12-31/us-cdc-reports-record-3-764-coronavirus-deaths-in-a-day

The other explanation could be that there are a lot of non-viral deaths happening as a result of the pandemic such as crowded hospitals leading to more deaths or the shut down, etc.  Regardless, the impact is pretty clear and obvious by viewing the graph this is not something we should shirk off as not serious.  We should be taking it very seriously.

 

[Peoriabird]

17 hours ago, REHawksFan said:

Honest question since you've said you are in the healthcare industry.  If vaccinated people can still get Covid and pass it along, how does having more vaccinated people eradicate the virus?  My wife and I were having this discussion recently because we are both fully vaccinated but have friends who haven't gotten vaccinated (not anti-vax in general but don't think it's necessary for them with Covid because they are young, healthy, etc...).  The question always comes up, is it a personal choice or a public good choice?  The issue we can't resolve is that we see people that have been vaccinated still getting Covid and still passing it along.  They aren't nearly as sick and don't end up dying from it, but they still get it and pass it.  So how does upping the Vax rate actually slow the spread of the virus?  And if it doesn't, how is it anything more than a personal decision?  

And as an aside, the entire family that I am referring to just had Covid, weren't vaxxed, and never had more than cold symptoms.  So now they are convinced they were in the right to not get vaccinated because it wasn't that bad and now they have antibodies.  

I'm going to have to reiterate this point for clarification

1.  Vaccines do not protect you from getting infected.  The rate of infection amongst vaccinated and non vaccinated are the same.

2.  The vaccine does not prevent you from infecting others if you are a carrier

3.  The vaccine simply improves your immune system ability to attenuate symptom. 

4.  That 95% efficacy rate that you often hear is the ability of the vaccine to prevent serious symptoms not to prevent infections

5.  The seat beat comparison does apply because vaccines only protect the vaccinated fron serious symptoms not others around you.

6.  I not an antivaxer but there should not be a different set of rules for vaccinated vs unvaccinated.  Both should wear mask and socially distance.  Also both should undergo the same rigorous testing to prevent spread more so with the vaccinated person because they are more likely to be asymptomatic carriers

[JeffS17]

2 minutes ago, Peoriabird said:

I'm going to have to reiterate this point for clarification

1.  Vaccines do not protect you from getting infected.  The rate of infection amongst vaccinated and non vaccinated are the same.

2.  The vaccine does not prevent you from infecting others if you are a carrier

3.  The vaccine simply improves your immune system ability to attenuate symptom. 

4.  That 95% efficacy rate that you often hear is the ability of the vaccine to prevent serious symptoms not to prevent infections

5.  The seat beat comparison does apply because vaccines only protect the vaccinated fron serious symptoms not others around you.

6.  I not an antivaxer but there should not be a different set of rules for vaccinated vs unvaccinated.  Both should wear mask and socially distance.  Also both should undergo the same rigorous testing to prevent spread more so with the vaccinated person because they are more likely to be asymptomatic carriers

The vaccine does make it less likely you contract the the disease (even if your body is exposed to the virus) which also means you're much less likely to spread.

I don't disagree with you in principle that everyone should still be cautious and follow the same guidelines, but the issue with that is implementation.  Vaccinated people tend to be pretty reluctant to completely alter their way of life because others' decision to not get vaccinated.  Furthermore, unvaccinated individuals are implicitly (or explicitly) saying that they accept the risks, so jumping through hoops to save someone who doesn't want to save themselves is a tough sell.  The reality is that if everyone was vaccinated, our hospitals would not be clogged and this virus would not be killing 2K people a day.

[Peoriabird]

1 minute ago, JeffS17 said:

The vaccine does make it less likely you contract the the disease (even if your body is exposed to the virus) which also means you're much less likely to spread.

 

Never read this anywhere.  In fact when discussing this with other physician, no one has come to this conclusion.  Even virologist have not come to this conclusion.  There is a lot of disinformation out there about vaccines.  The current thinking is that the infection rate is the same but the symptoms are attenuated.  I can provide you with numerous video that reiterate this point.

[Peoriabird]

 

[thecampster]

20 minutes ago, JeffS17 said:

This is a really good point in that most Covid-19 deaths have comorbidities, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are fatal, and it also doesn't make the statistic "wrong".  This is one of the things I struggled with early on when discussing Covid-19's severity, but I've since come to terms with.  You can see in the graph below total deaths in the US by year.  There's a small increase yearly through 2019 as our population grows and ages, but then in 2020 there's an obvious spike up.  The spike up is ~575K deaths in the year.  There is A LOT of noise baked into this number that is not necessarily Covid-related (population growth, aging population, hospitals being at capacity, shutdowns leading to mental health issues, etc. etc.).  BUT I would say -- subjectively -- this is a great barometer for the total effect the pandemic has had on mortality.  The 575K is actually far greater than the 350K deaths reported for the year in the United States.  This would actually suggest quite the opposite -- that we're under-reporting (makes sense politically) of deaths related to Covid.  You can see in this article the CDC only reported 340K deaths for 2020 related to the pandemic.

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2020-12-31/us-cdc-reports-record-3-764-coronavirus-deaths-in-a-day

The other explanation could be that there are a lot of non-viral deaths happening as a result of the pandemic such as crowded hospitals leading to more deaths or the shut down, etc.  Regardless, the impact is pretty clear and obvious by viewing the graph this is not something we should shirk off as not serious.  We should be taking it very seriously.

 

Now this is really good in seeing the middle ground between "COVID deaths" and "COVID related". This is gets away from the icky COVID language and engages "excess deaths" or "impact" if you will. Many of these can be attributed to suicide, lack of supplies, medicine hospital resources, etc.  Showing true impact instead of just regurgitating a number is way more effective.

[Diesel]

11 hours ago, sillent said:

How about everyone just go vegan. Alkaline your body and you don't have to worry about viruses or diseases.

Or is telling people what to put in there bodies their choice?

If not go vegan no more meat and dairy. Do that and then tell me who's worried about a vaccination.

If we can't tell you what to put in your body don't tell the next person. Simple as that. 

If the vaccine worked like it should nobody would worry about who's vaccinated and who's not. It would just be "smart" people and dead people. Either somethings not working or somethings not right.

I see the unvaccinated homeless still alive and well. What kinda "free" country do we live in when there's no choice on what we put in our bodies?

Again if the vaccine works than good for the vaccinated but it obviously doesn't if everyone has to get it for it to work. Sounds like bs.

 

 

Look around look around.   Right now, Covid is a death sentence for the unvaccinated.   And some may be fine with that.. but if it goes farther... you may see people saying... my taxes shouldn't pay for unvaccinated people taking up Hospital beds.  It's a cold world out here. 

The country is definitely free.  But you have to live with the consequences of those freedoms too.  So It's not really free.   I mean you can say what you want... Freedom of speech.. but that doesn't mean you get to keep your job!

Right now you can be unvax...  BUT eventually, the question will be asked.. why should you get to ride on my airline and possibly effect others?  Why should you work in my business and possibly effect others?  Why should you be able to come into my venue and possibly effect others?  Why should I let you in my country so that you can effect others?

So you do have your freedoms for now... but this world is cold. 

 

 

[bleachkit]

50 minutes ago, AHF said:

I know they are not counted but I would also count people who die because they can't get access to ICU, etc. because they are overcrowded due to the unvaccinated sucking up resources.  It must be unbelievably traumatic to hear that no hospital can take your spouse who is suffering a heart attack because they are full of unvaccinated Covid patients.  

Not a hypothetical as we are seeing that in action.

 

Actually, avoiding medical infrastructural collapse was one the main reason for the lockdowns in the first place. That was considered worst case scenario and why extreme measures for Covid prevention were justified. For the most part that has been avoided fortunately, although there have been hospitals were/are overrun, mostly smaller rural hospitals. 

[bleachkit]

3 minutes ago, Diesel said:

Look around look around.   Right now, Covid is a death sentence for the unvaccinated.   And some may be fine with that.. but if it goes farther... you may see people saying... my taxes shouldn't pay for unvaccinated people taking up Hospital beds.  It's a cold world out here. 

The country is definitely free.  But you have to live with the consequences of those freedoms too.  So It's not really free.   I mean you can say what you want... Freedom of speech.. but that doesn't mean you get to keep your job!

Right now you can be unvax...  BUT eventually, the question will be asked.. why should you get to ride on my airline and possibly effect others?  Why should you work in my business and possibly effect others?  Why should you be able to come into my venue and possibly effect others?  Why should I let you in my country so that you can effect others?

So you do have your freedoms for now... but this world is cold. 

 

 

It's not a death sentence for the unvaccinated if they are young and healthy. Age is still the factor mostly strongly correlated with Covid mortality. 

[Peoriabird]

6 minutes ago, Diesel said:

Right now you can be unvax...  BUT eventually, the question will be asked.. why should you get to ride on my airline and possibly effect others? 

 

 

I want to reiterate this again!!!  Vaccination status does not matter in this scenario.  Vaccinated people can infected you at the same rate as unvaccinated people

[niremetal]

1 hour ago, bleachkit said:

It's true that death statistics are not cut and dry. If someone has stage 5 lung cancer and is positive for Covid at the time of death, is that a cancer death or a Covid death? Well traditionally that would have been labeled a cancer death, but nevertheless that would currently be tallied a Covid death. Seeing how Covid deaths are so strongly correlated with advanced age, it's a fair assumption most are associated with significant comorbidities. So these are fair points regarding Covid death statistics, it's not too minimize it, it's just to provide honest context. But even bringing this up will get you labeled a Covid denialist or some other strawman. 

It's just not true that if someone had a terminal illness but then died faster as the result of an acute illness, that the terminal illness would have been considered the immediate (much less the sole) cause of death. That's never been true, either medically or legally. Medical examiners would list the acute illness as the immediate cause, and only list the terminal illness if it appeared to play a direct role in the chain of causation. Either way, the acute illness would be listed as the more immediate/prominent cause of death.

Legally, it's even more cut-and-dried. If you drive drunk and kill someone who would have died the next day from terminal cancer, it's still vehicular homicide.

In any event, most of the people dying of COVID aren't terminally ill. There might be other risk factors involved that make many people more likely to die of COVID if they contract it, but that's true of pretty much any disease.

[Peoriabird]

1 hour ago, thecampster said:

That is way too deep for most people to fully grasp but one of the better points made here. Its common but something that should be stated and mentioned to others.

Get the shots, your chances of hospitalization go down dramatically which in turn saves hospital resources for others.  A very important and often glossed over point.

The counter argument to this is not one athlete has been admitted to an ICU to my knowledge.  This population has a healthy immune system and is able to mount an adequate defense against this virus resulting in most being asymptomatic carriers

[Diesel]

7 minutes ago, bleachkit said:

It's not a death sentence for the unvaccinated if they are young and healthy. Age is still the factor mostly strongly correlated with Covid mortality. 

That's true.   However, we haven't talked about Mutations.

To me... the fact that we know that mutations exists and the longer there's an unvax population, the more likely there is that a mutation will come along that is not prevented by the vax...  

It speaks to me like this...

The unvax are putting everybody's lives in danger.  They are a looming clear and present threat to the rest of society.  Maybe not at this very moment but eventually.   

 

 

[bleachkit]

10 minutes ago, niremetal said:

It's just not true that if someone had a terminal illness but then died faster as the result of an acute illness, that the terminal illness would have been considered the immediate (much less the sole) cause of death. That's never been true, either medically or legally. Medical examiners would list the acute illness as the immediate cause, and only list the terminal illness if it appeared to play a direct role in the chain of causation. Either way, the acute illness would be listed as the more immediate/prominent cause of death.

Legally, it's even more cut-and-dried. If you drive drunk and kill someone who would have died the next day from terminal cancer, it's still vehicular homicide.

In any event, most of the people dying of COVID aren't terminally ill. There might be other risk factors involved that make many people more likely to die of COVID if they contract it, but that's true of pretty much any disease.

Why do we then say Freddie Mercury died of AIDS? Why do we not say he died of pneumocystis? 

Edited September 27, 2021 by bleachkit

[macdaddy]

There have been lots of studies showing the vaccine does provide protection against infection.   It's not 90% as pointed out that's the protection against severe disease but it does still provide protection against infection so not sure where the idea that it doesn't has come from.

New CDC Study: Vaccination Offers Higher Protection than Previous COVID-19 Infection | CDC Online Newsroom | CDC

The rate of 'breakthrough' infection of vaccinated people is still significant i agree.   

The Delta variant has proven to be much more dangerous to a  younger group of people.   This is anecdotal for sure but have you ever seen the flu take out 2 parents in their early 40s? 

Georgia teacher dies of COVID-19 1 month after husband, a middle school football coach – WSB-TV Channel 2 - Atlanta (wsbtv.com)