We moved my dad into a retirement facility two days ago. 99% of the residents and 84% of the staff are vaccinated. Austin is moving to Stage 4 restrictions, so people have to wear masks and guests are not allowed to eat in the dining room.
The Director said that they will require staff to be vaccinated once full FDA approval is granted.
Ugh. I cannot even express how furious I am at the idiots who won’t get vaccinated (standard disclaimer excluding those very few who can’t).
84% is pretty good compared to some facilities. I found out that my mother’s facility’s staff vaccination rate has gone from 60% TO 85%. i asked some more questions and found out the unvaccinated are mostly overnight staff. However the daytime charge nurse is not vaccinated!
It is also good to ask if the staff is “dedicated” to a particular section or floor or if they are moved around, which increases exposure.
It is possible that vaccines for the elderly who got their shots early, will wane by late fall. This idea scares me when some staff are still not vaccinated.
Anybody has a survey showing the reasons why people don’t get vaccinated?
I don’t understand what the heck they are waiting for. Why is it dragging? Anyone have insight?
Fear of getting sued, maybe?
From June. Scroll down for reasons.
Thanks. Looks like living in rural areas is a big reason. Not fully approved by the FDA doesn’t help.
It’s not exactly “dragging” - it’s received priority review status. They are just not skipping steps.
Here is what the FDA itself says:
However, regulators say that speeding up the U.S. approval process, long considered the gold standard for pharmaceutical regulations worldwide, essentially defeats the purpose of getting more people vaccinated.
“Any vaccine approval without completion of the high-quality review and evaluation that Americans expect the agency to perform would undermine the FDA’s statutory responsibilities, affect public trust in the agency and do little to help combat vaccine hesitancy,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, wrote in a July 9 letter responding to Topol’s op-ed.
It’s articles like those that really help me lose my sympathy for those who have bad cases even to the point of death if they rejected the vaccines.
I guess my science brain reverts to, “Natural Selection at work.” There is so much hard data out there now, but some just refuse to consider it. It’s no surprise at all that the demographics for those are much higher among the non-college educated.
At least 3% polled said they definitely would get it and 16% said they probably would. Not all minds are closed, but for those that are, I’ve very little sympathy for them and a lot of anger if others get bad cases or die due to them.
Unrelated, but wanted to say I like your avatar! 
It just seems that we have a lot of really stupid people in this country and it scares the crap out of me. (I am feeling a little cranky this morning 
)
(And it is not like I am some genius. I don’t understand the rigorous statistical studies, but I understand their bottom line. I understand to listen to the science, the scientists, the doctors…and the death rates.)
Agree 100%! And it would be helpful if our former president (who got vaccinated and whose administration is responsible for Operation Warp Speed), told his followers very publicly to get vaccinated.
I think workplaces and schools making it mandatory will be the most helpful for the holdouts. It gives them an excuse to “change their mind.” This was from the NYT daily email yesterday:
" Vaccine mandates are controversial. They’re also effective.
Before Houston Methodist became one of the first hospital systems in the U.S. to mandate Covid-19 vaccines, about 85 percent of its employees were vaccinated. After the mandate, the share rose to about 98 percent, with the remaining 2 percent receiving exemptions for medical or religious reasons, Bloomberg’s Carey Goldberg reported. Only about 0.6 percent of employees quit or were fired.
Schools — including Indiana University and many private colleges — that require students and workers to get vaccinated have reported extremely high uptake.
A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey of Americans who had been opposed to getting vaccinated and later changed their minds found that mandates — or restrictions on the unvaccinated — were one common reason. One 51-year-old man told Kaiser that he began to feel as if he had “limited options without it.”
The French government will soon require that people show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test to eat at a restaurant, attend a movie or participate in many other activities. After President Emmanuel Macron announced the policy last week, the number of vaccine appointments surged. Italy announced a similar policy yesterday, The Times’s Marc Santora explains.
It’s true that these mandates often generate intense criticism. In France, more than 100,000 people marched to protest Macron’s policy. In the U.S., critics sued, unsuccessfully so far, to stop Indiana University’s mandate. Some Republican politicians have also tried to stop mandates, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio.
The mandates are also not 100 percent effective. Some people will receive exemptions, as was the case at Houston Methodist. A small number may forge vaccine records. And some vaccinated people will still contract mild versions of Covid, through so-called breakthrough infections.
But even with the opposition and the exceptions, mandates can play a major role in reducing the spread of Covid and saving lives. That’s especially true now that the Delta variant is fueling a rise in cases. “The takeaway message remains, if you’re vaccinated, you are protected,” Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious disease specialist, told our colleague Apoorva Mandavilli “You are not going to end up with severe disease, hospitalization or death.”’
…
"Dr. Aaron Carroll, Indiana University’s chief health officer, has noted that the country’s victories over many diseases — including smallpox, polio, mumps, rubella and diphtheria — have depended on vaccine mandates by states or local governments. "
There’s also this article about how common colds are making the rounds:
I wish someone could find a vax that worked against those!
We have a friend who we believe will not get vaccinated but whose son got vaccinated because his college requires it. Honestly, I think the son was pushing to be vaccinated even before the vaccine mandate (he just graduated HS) and it made it easier for the family to reluctantly go along with it.
These types of stories abound now. Only time will tell if they make a difference:
"The number of COVID-19 patients at Baptist Medical Center is rapidly rising, according to CNN. There are 349 patients with coronavirus at the moment, and 74 are in the ICU, the media outlet reported.
Around 44 percent of the patients at the hospital are under the age of 40, and are staying at the hospital much longer because they are sicker, Kaye said.
An overwhelming majority (99.6 percent) have not yet received a COVID-19 vaccine, CNN added."
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/23/us/missouri-covid-vaccine-nursing-instructor/index.html
" Christy Henry had played it safe during the pandemic.
Wearing a mask in public and rarely coming into contact with others, the 56-year-old former nurse, who now works as a nursing instructor, resides in southern Missouri with her retired husband and children.
However, after Covid-19 vaccines became widely distributed in the spring, Henry and her family chose to not get inoculated. Henry said they felt because of their rural location and lifestyle, their risk of exposure was low.
But then she began to feel unwell about three weeks ago. “Never in a million years do you think it’s going to happen to you,” she said."
This was an interesting read interviewing people who recently changed their minds opting to get vaxed - and what changed their minds from incentives to requirements to seeing Delta, etc:
Even had his college not required it, once he turns 18 he can sign the forms himself and get vaccinated. All he would need is family’s insurance information, and 18 year olds need that anyway as they tend to visit their healthcare providers w/o parents in tow.
Many nursing homes have staffing shortages. They worry that if the vaccine is required they’ll lose even more employees. Is it better to have an unvaccinated staff or no staff at all?
Common colds are caused by a number of viruses from different families, even the Corona one, just not that Corona. So there is no single target to go after. Plus, common colds are not very deadly - for most part, they are a nuisance. Consequentially, there is not much funding, private or governmental, for vaccine research in this area.