Now people will just say that the full approval was rushed. Wait for it.
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About the gang leader: āOn Thursday, he was suspended without pay.ā Good.
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It seems to match what @Texastiger2* described upthread, the doctorsā fatigue. (I also read an article earlier in the summer where medical staff in a hospital reported being verbally abused by patientsā families, by neighbours in the grocery store, being accused of perpetuating a hoax or making money off gullible people who just have the fluā¦ This too must have taken its toll.)
- Edited for proper screen handle, sorry.
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I think you meant me. Yes, Iāve been in lots of talks hearing doctors and nurses suggesting walkouts, not referring patients for MAB treatment, refusing unvaccinated patients. Too many people insisting on medical therapies that are not evidence-based but instead suggested by their neighbors or family friends. Patients refusing the mask requirement to enter their office. Thereās a term ācompassion fatigueā, long held internally, but more and more healthcare providers are willing to openly admit it now. There was an internal memo discovered from a hospital in north or central Texas that was discovered indicating unvaccinated patients would be at the bottom of the list for ventilators.
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Yes, sorry. I corrected it above and hope I got it right this time.
Yes, and I will add that in no group that I was in did anyone advocate to stage a walkout. It goes against our oath to take care of patients. But the talk of frustration is at that level where drastic suggestions are entertained, though quickly dismissed. Hopefully we will reach the peak of the current wave soon.
Yep.
Well, if it gets to the point where you have 1 ICU bed and four people who need it, some fashion of triage has to be done. If all are equally sick, then someone has to be denied the bed. I can totally see how this decision could test a caregiverās compassion.
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I hope so, too, but am afraid other excuses will be their fallback position and/or they will insist that the approval was somehow politically induced. I shared the news this morning but have not received a reply. Iām not optimistic.
This is the response when I posted about FDA approval on a reluctant personās Facebook page: ājust like thalidomide and DES and countless other destructive medicine. FDA approval is meaningless.ā Sigh.
Oh, and this is the person whose son was hospitalized with COVID and sent home with a BiPAP machine. It boggles the mind.
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Given how many times weāve seen hospital workers come out against vaccines over the past year, it doesnāt seem all that unlikely. On the other hand, people who work in health care who oppose vaccines is an unlikely scenario, but unfortunately, not as rare as we would hope.
Iām sorry you are experiencing this and you have my sympathy. Unless someone experiences this, itās hard to understand how hard it is.
Iām reeling over the reaction Iāve received from long time friends about our family members choices to get vaccinated. Hās bf hasnāt responded to his attempts to reach him. Itās even worse than I expected.
Meanwhile, I just heard about a relativeās attempts to get a religious exemption. I donāt think this person has stepped into a church in many years. No wonder bishops are skeptical. And Iāve shed tears for months and lost friends and had strife in my family over this for genuine reasons in our efforts to work through this. It has not been an easy path.
Itās a bad day. Sorry. Too many things hitting at once.
IIRC, Thalidomide wasnāt even FDA approved when the drug was being used by pregnant women, though there were some American women involved in drug trials.
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I have an uncle in hospice. I told my mom that I am not comfortable going to his funeral right now. Iām not sure when the funeral will be as he lives in Florida but is originally from Ohio and most of his family still lives there.
But Iām uncomfortable not knowing who is vaccinated, and expect that some are in a crowd that doesnāt have the same views of the pandemic that I do. My husband is immunocompromised.
Two of my momās sisters had Covid before vaccines and werenāt careful with their comings and goings.
My sister plans on attending the funeral but she doesnāt have a husband who is immunocompromised. My mom is hoping the funeral will be postponed.
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I think it worth pointing out that āhospital workersā does not, in this context, generally include physicians. According to the AMA as of 2 months ago 96% of practicing physicians have been vaccinated. I wouldnāt be surprised if itās over 99% at this point.
The problem is that social media and certain media outlets give the vanishingly small minority of anti-vax physicians a far louder bullhorn than theyād otherwise have. And tragically itās not the only issue for which this is the case.
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I think there are many anti-vaxxers who are now traumatized by their own cognitive dissonance and feeling trapped by their ideology and fear of both getting covid and the social ramifications of getting the vaccine at this point.
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The problem is that response isnāt wrong. The FDA has approved things that later on are withdrawn because of side effects that werenāt known.
Do I think itās the exactly the same as vaccines? No.
Have vaccines in the past been withdrawn after approval? Yes.
It will be an ongoing challenge to change the minds of a certain segment of the population. And if it turns out that the Covid vaccines are more akin to flu vaccines (mitigate disease severity) and require constant tweaking to account for mutations, convincing people to take the vaccine may become even more difficult. The flu kills a good number of people every year but overall itās not mandated to interact generally in the public or private sphere.
As an aside, this article illustrates why a wait and see approach and/or more understanding and testing may be necessary in connection with drug development. Again not directly analogous to vaccine development but might explain why a certain segment of the population isnāt rushing to take the vaccine.
Perhaps no other drug in modern medicine rivals the dramatic revitalization of thalidomide. Originally marketed as a sedative, thalidomide gained immense popularity worldwide among pregnant women because of its effective anti-emetic properties in morning sickness. Mounting evidence of human teratogenicity marked a dramatic fall from grace and led to widespread social, legal and economic ramifications. Despite its tragic past thalidomide emerged several decades later as a novel and highly effective agent in the treatment of various inflammatory and malignant diseases. In 2006 thalidomide completed its remarkable renaissance becoming the first new agent in over a decade to gain approval for the treatment of plasma cell myeloma. The catastrophic collapse yet subsequent revival of thalidomide provides important lessons in drug development. Never entirely abandoned by the medical community, thalidomide resurfaced as an important drug once the mechanisms of action were further studied and better understood. Ongoing research and development of related drugs such as lenalidomide now represent a class of irreplaceable drugs in hematological malignancies. Further, the tragedies associated with this agent stimulated the legislation which revamped the FDA regulatory process, expanded patient informed consent procedures and mandated more transparency from drug manufacturers. Finally, we review recent clinical trials summarizing selected medical indications for thalidomide with an emphasis on hematologic malignancies. Herein, we provide a historic perspective regarding the up-and-down development of thalidomide. Using PubMed databases we conducted searches using thalidomide and associated keywords highlighting pharmacology, mechanisms of action, and clinical uses.
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The approval of the Pfizer vaccine may bring in some but probably not near enough as is needed. The only thing left is mandates from employers and businesses and government. These mandates will at least make it so that the vaccinated can get back some semblance of normal life.
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Too hard to what? Consider how other people feel? Discuss ways to make the reluctant feel more encouraged and secure so theyāll decide to get the vaccine? Discuss how history may be contributing to the problem?
Your hostility accomplishes zero.
And a majority of those dying made the decision not to vaccinate. You can lead a horse to water but you canāt make him drink.
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