To Vaccinate or Not---The Rat Flu Odyssey Continues

[uglymoney]

Delta spread outdoors vs original? Anybodies guess? Somewhere above almost none.

Attended a vax or negative test required bluegrass festival this weekend. Did my best to keep distanced. Wore a mask in the beer line. Didn't push to stage front. Didn't go into the showers. The crowd did a good job of spacing themselves out. Mostly in a lawn chair with friends. Not as fun as sweating it out dancing in the crowd up front but live music was awesome. Blue Ox ftw.

Some local docs and health department saying the breakthrough cases they are seeing amongst staff here in Cedar Rapids are from high exposure events like family members and prolonged exposures at indoor gatherings. Suggest high exposure increases risk of breakthrough and so mitigation is definitely our friend. The vax probably protects us well against lower exposure events.

J&J booster findings look great. 9x boost of antibodies and they aren't seeing a reduction over time in antibodies like we are with the MNRA vaccines. Also there seems to be no cellular adenovirus blocking of the second injection which was a major worry early on.


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/h...mid=fb-nytimes

Wife is a week out from Moderna 3. No effect except peace of mind.

Daughter is attending an Iowa Covid exposure clinic school with masks optional thanks to Covid Kim and her taliban like law preventing mask mandates Really takes the joy out of watching my girl blossom into a jr high schooler. Good news is lots of kids are masking and all but one of her teachers is with mask in class. Bad news is she is 11.

Almost 19 year old vaxxed back home for his second year of college working a pizza joint and attending everything. We are definitely leaning into our vaccines for protection this year.

The next few weeks as Iowa crosses 4th wave peak in early September will be fun. I do believe we are at by far the highest risk of exposure since this thing began.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

What if the government offered a $2500 stimulus check to everyone vaccinated? Think that would move the needle?

Most of vax hesitant, Trump loving, Freedom crowd that I work around thought all the EIP checks were great and the ones most eager to take advantage of the CARES act money.

They’re closet socialists I guess.

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[ticketchecker]

Whatever...I don't give a fuck anymore.

[Ted Striker]

They’re closet socialists I guess.

I used to ask self-described conservatives what they meant by socialism, and the answers were mostly just some version of someone else getting something they didn't (even if they did).

[MagnificentUnicorn]

Young people aren't even slightly concerned about the hospital or medical bills, because they don't think they have any chance of incurring any.

Kinda related, I wonder how many of the anti vaccine folks in the hospital with Covid know that the government is still paying their hospital bills. These are mostly people that are strongly opposed to socialized medicine.


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[MagnificentUnicorn]

I also have friends who work in a school and health care. They are planning to move to Montana to evade the vaccine requirements in Washington.

Good riddance


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[californiagrown]

J&J booster findings look great. 9x boost of antibodies and they aren't seeing a reduction over time in antibodies like we are with the MNRA vaccines.
.

Despite getting morbidly ill for 18hrs post injection, im stoked on the J&J vaccine. I heard the same thing on NPR this morning while working out. I cannot wait to get the booster shot, but likely won't be eligible for a long while I view the vaccine and booster shot the same way i would view an anti-hangover vaccine- I fucking want it badly so i can do stupid stuff on autopilot again.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

$29,000 a plate fundraiser in Napa over the weekend, nothing but white people with POC servants.....where are the masks? Masks for thee, but not for me:

https://nypost.com/2021/08/22/video-...si-fundraiser/

Wow, that’s a real gotcha there. Outdoors, probably all fully vaccinated and the staff are likely going in and out of the kitchen and complying with regulations. Strong work, you showed them


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[Adolf Allerbush]

I’m all for the state increasing restrictions until the ICUs aren’t full. Masks, business closures, etc.

If I or my family have some health issue right now that requires hospitalization or surgery, we are screwed.

If this makes certain people unhappy, I too do not give a fuck anymore.

this, 100%. Hospitals are cancelling "elective" surgeries that are not really elective, like heart surgery. There may need to be some sort of restrictions applied to hospitals so the unvaxxed are not sucking up all the resources due to their stupidity. Was talking to a friend who sells aortic stents and valves...they've had hospitals in rural areas cancel almost all of their cases lately since the hospitals can only care for COVID-19 at the moment. He was saying their patients have a 50% fatality rate in 12 months from being diagnosed, so people who did the right thing, got vaccinated, are dying because of the antivax idiots.

[liv2ski]

Not vaxed, get sick? Go home to die. It is pretty simple and would sure step up people getting vaxed once the idiots saw society wasn't supporting their shit any longer.

[uglymoney]

Not vaxed, get sick? Go home to die. It is pretty simple and would sure step up people getting vaxed once the idiots saw society wasn't supporting their shit any longer.

It feels to me like majority vaxxed is starting to roll over the minority unvaxxed. Like fuck those people say more and more everyday. They are an ever smaller minority fighting against an ever bigger majority. And the Supreme Court already has made it clear they get no special protection.

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[The AD]

I just saw that Delta Airlines is going to begin charging their unvaccinated employees and extra $200 per month for health insurance. I'm hoping other companies start following suit. Affecting people's pocketbooks will make them think about just how staunch their anti-vax stances are.

[summit]

As Americans, we contribute between $400-$500 million annually to the WHO through our tax dollars, so I already contribute personally. Thanks, it feels great. :self hug:

You personally contribute ~$2 a year through taxes? Me too! Fuckin-A!

I also contributed $2 to the pet shelter hitting the wrong button checking out at the pet store, so I'm twice the good samaritan you are!

That is how the world gets saved bro!

[seano732]

Delta Airlines to add 200$/ month to insurance premiums for their unvaccinated employees…..
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/25/delt...d-vaccine.html

Edit: the AD beat me to it.

[uglymoney]

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.subs...ain-vaccinated

**So, are breakthrough cases as contagious as unvaccinated cases?***
We needed a special study to answer this called: “viral viability through replication in cell culture”. Basically this is a lab study to see if the virus found among vaccinated people replicate in a petri dish.

We just got the results from one study. Scientists studied 161 breakthrough cases among healthcare workers (HCWs) in the Netherlands. The average age of the HCWs was 25.5 years and all infections were mild and did not require hospital admission. The PCR positive swabs were tested for the viral load (i.e. Ct value) AND tested for the presence of infectious virus (opposed to noninfectious virus) in that viral load.

What did they find?

1. The viral load was the same with vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated samples. This is not new. It just confirms #3 in this post above. We saw this in the famous CDC study on the Massachusetts outbreak among vaccinated as well as other studies.

2. 7 out of 10 (68.6%) vaccinated HCWs were positive for infectious virus compared to 8.5 out of 10 (84.9%) unvaccinated HCWs were positive for infectious virus. This tells us that if you’re vaccinated and you come in contact with the virus, you’ll likely to be less contagious than unvaccinated people. But not all the time.

***Bottom Line***
Vaccines continue to help on the individual-level: they keep you out of the hospital. They also continue to help on a population-level: You play less of a role in the transmission chain than unvaccinated. If and when a vaccinated person is contagious, it’s for less amount of time compared to unvaccinated too (6 days vs. 18 days). This will no doubt help end the pandemic. But, even given this, we all still need to wear our masks to stop transmission

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[jono]

You personally contribute ~$2 a year through taxes? Me too! Fuckin-A!

I also contributed $2 to the pet shelter hitting the wrong button checking out at the pet store, so I'm twice the good samaritan you are!

That is how the world gets saved bro!

Memba when an annual ROI of 20,000% seemed like a good investment? I memba.

[The AD]

You personally contribute ~$2 a year through taxes? Me too! Fuckin-A!

I also contributed $2 to the pet shelter hitting the wrong button checking out at the pet store, so I'm twice the good samaritan you are!

That is how the world gets saved bro!

Yeah, I think I'm willing to contribute a few dollars per year to support global health.

[MontuckyFried]

this, 100%. Hospitals are cancelling "elective" surgeries that are not really elective, like heart surgery. There may need to be some sort of restrictions applied to hospitals so the unvaxxed are not sucking up all the resources due to their stupidity. Was talking to a friend who sells aortic stents and valves...they've had hospitals in rural areas cancel almost all of their cases lately since the hospitals can only care for COVID-19 at the moment. He was saying their patients have a 50% fatality rate in 12 months from being diagnosed, so people who did the right thing, got vaccinated, are dying because of the antivax idiots.

Might want to redirect your ire toward the hospitals themselves. Last year, they furloughed a sizeable portion of their work force. All while taking in billions in healthcare funding, bailouts, and paying their execs record amounts. Then they had a tough time restaffing.

It's not so much that unvaxxed are clogging up entire hospitals. Sure, that's some of it to a degree, but I'd say it's more that the hospitals downsized their capabilities during the pandemic. Again, while raking in assloads of COVID cash and giving their CEOs absolutely insane payouts. And now they're screwed on both the "elective" and emergency fronts. Don't overlook this root problem. Even WaPo, NYT, and NPR have covered this problem extensively over the last year+. How hospitals didn't reallocate and shuffle workers more effectively is ludicrous.

Hospitals Got Bailouts and Furloughed Thousands While Paying C.E.O.s Millions
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/b...s-ceo-pay.html

Amid Pandemic, Hospitals Lay Off 1.4M Workers In April
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/10/85352...rkers-in-april

Hospitals: "AH! COVID! LAY OFF ALL TEH STAFF!"
[CEO enjoys $30MM payday]
Same hospitals 2 seconds later: "AH! COVID! WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH STAFF!"

[old_newguy]

Show me the reduction in ICU capacity between last year and this year.

Your blah blah blah is not an issue if there isn’t an unvaccinated delta surge into the hospitals in my state right now.

[summit]

Memorial Hermann closes 3 stand-alone ERs in Greater Houston

-COVID-19 surge prompts resource management for hospital system

http://katytimes.com/stories/memoria...r-houston,4650

Everything is fine!

Well, everything might not be fine, but that's not the worry.

Stand alone ERs exist for one purpose: to capture and direct revenue, er, I mean, patients, to the mothership hospitals that own the Doc-In-The-Box.

Sounds like they can't staff the main hospital ER at night so they are pulling staff from the feeder Doc-In-The-Boxes.

[AK47bp]

I just saw that Delta Airlines is going to begin charging their unvaccinated employees and extra $200 per month for health insurance. I'm hoping other companies start following suit. Affecting people's pocketbooks will make them think about just how staunch their anti-vax stances are.

Makes sense, no different than a tobacco use surcharge many companies have.


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[GiBo]

I've talked about my Q/Trumper employee before. He, of course, is staunchly anti-vax. Believes covid was released by the Chinese from a lab (the reason changes- to steal the US election, decrease the elderly in China, use it so the WHO and CDC can put some nefarious thing in our bodies etc...). Well, looks like his dad is going to die from covid. He has pneumonia and is on a ventilator. He hasn't said whether his dad is vaxed or not, but I'm assuming he's not given how ill he is (and the fact the employee hasn't mentioned it. I'm sure he'd tell me if he was as a "see it doesn't even work" statement.) The doctors at the small veterans hospital his dad is in want to put his dad in comfort care. They only have 12 ICU beds and they have 5x the patients that need it. He can be a real red ass and is going ape shit on the doctors to keep him in ICU. He keeps throwing in little caveats into his texts ("Man, this delta sure is different") I think to distance himself from his previously stated beliefs and the awful reality he's facing. The mental gymnastics is hard to watch. As much as I hate his idiodic beliefs, there is no schadenfreude. I care about the dumbass and hate to see him going through this.

Where I work we have a 38% vaccination rate out of 218 employees (at least only 38% sent in the attestation card that was asked for and said they were vaxed). So we're basically Alabama. Lot's of blue collar armchair epidemiologists here. We've been hit hard by cases and exposures and can barely operate some days. I've heard from a high up that a mandate is coming. About a third of our employees are considered public facing and will not be allowed exemptions. Many are saying they'll resign. Stay tuned...

[summit]

Show me the reduction in ICU capacity between last year and this year.

Your blah blah blah is not an issue if there isn’t an unvaccinated delta surge into the hospitals in my state right now.

What do you want to see?

Nobody eliminated licensed beds, so there is nothing to show you.

Hospital admins just sliced up the staff needed to operate those licensed beds.

New staffing models were implemented during COVID in addition to furloughs and layoffs keeping staffing super tight during the shutdowns. Nursing staff is the biggest variable cost for hospitals. Management decided that running tight was a profitable thing to keep around... Except it burns people out and makes them fucking hate work (and is bad for safety and patient experience), and staff paychecks suffered, so people did everything possible to not have a bedside nursing job. You watch the nursing groups around the nation and its easy to see what hospital management's response to unhappy burned out staff was: "have some free pizza and please pick up extra shifts so we don't have to hire people."

Now we have tight staffing models, inability to hire, staff out sick, staff unwilling to pick up extra, society is operating normally (so all the normal patients are in the hospital), all the deferred patients are in the hospital, and you throw a COVID surge on top of that and a stressed tight understaffed unit unable to hire more nurses, and the system buckles and seizes up. But HCA's stock is still gonna go to the moooooooooooooooooon!

[old_newguy]

What do you want to see?

Nobody eliminated licensed beds, so there is nothing to show you.

Hospital admins just sliced up the staff needed to operate those licensed beds.

New staffing models were implemented during COVID in addition to furloughs and layoffs keeping staffing super tight during the shutdowns. Nursing staff is the biggest variable cost for hospitals. Management decided that running tight was a profitable thing to keep around... Except it burns people out and makes them fucking hate work (and is bad for safety and patient experience), and staff paychecks suffered, so people did everything possible to not have a bedside nursing job. You watch the nursing groups around the nation and its easy to see what hospital management's response to unhappy burned out staff was: "have some free pizza and please pick up extra shifts so we don't have to hire people."

Now we have tight staffing models, inability to hire, staff out sick, staff unwilling to pick up extra, society is operating normally (so all the normal patients are in the hospital), all the deferred patients are in the hospital, and you throw a COVID surge on top of that and a stressed tight understaffed unit unable to hire more nurses, and the system buckles and seizes up. But HCA's stock is still gonna go to the moooooooooooooooooon!

So our market based system, which Montucky has all kinds of excuses against changing, functions as expected when faced with a funding shortfall and up until the unvaccinated delta surge had capacity. Yeah, no easy solution to that one, blame the hospitals.

[The AD]

Hospitals: "AH! COVID! LAY OFF ALL TEH STAFF!"
[CEO enjoys $30MM payday]
Same hospitals 2 seconds later: "AH! COVID! WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH STAFF!"

Are you ever going to address the idiotic statement you made a couple weeks ago that Florida was doing fine?