I agree with the government’s strategy to focus on the vaccine. But I don’t get your comparison of MAb to boosters - breakthrough is pretty mild and MAb shouldn’t be needed (unvaxed is a different matter).
You probably need to go back and read that conversation since I was replying to someone. Discussing Christian apologetics is OT.
I mean the shot is cheaper than MAb.
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Haven’t seen the data (including R&D) but suspect you are correct. The vaccine has a clear advantage in that it can keep you from getting infected and/or infecting others, as you have pointed out. Even in a strict cost comparison scenario, that just seems like the better path.
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If one were concerned about not wasting resources, one would have encouraged the use of the millions of existing vials as boosters before they expire. Suffice to say, much of the world believes they are following the science in giving boosters, and the US is playing catch-up.
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Some teachers are not young…or not healthy. They have no choice about attending their jobs in person with students who could easily spread this virus.
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You’re seriously arguing that boosters which cost < $30 each are wasting public money, but those who refuse to get vaxxed and then cost the gov’t thousands (for MAb) or hundreds of thousands (ventilators, etc) more is somehow ok?
Each breakthrough case that needs to be hospitalized, even though there are relatively few of them, pays for several boosters. If one could do the math, it’d be a reasonable bet that boosters cost the public less since hospitalization is so expensive.
It does match the Rabies vs Covid fears reasoning though I guess. (aka, goes along with what you want to believe vs going along with what the data shows)
ETA Meant to add that our health insurance through school has a wellness aspect to it where they provide (at the insurance company’s cost) lab tests once per year to check blood numbers and several fitness/wellness classes to try to keep people healthier as it saves them money over teachers getting sick(er) and then costing them more. I think a fair number of insurers do that for larger businesses.
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We are up to the $billions
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I’m sure you did…
Perhaps this article from the CDC can be helpful for your next scare.
Small rodents (like squirrels, hamsters, guinea pigs, gerbils, chipmunks, rats, and mice) and lagomorphs (including rabbits and hares) are almost never found to be infected with rabies and have not been known to transmit rabies to humans.
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never posted that ALL teachers are young and healthy…
But let’s be clear: adding essential workers to the front of the line is a (correct, in my view) political decision but not “following the science.”
I agree it’s a correct decision….regardless of how it was determined.
Don’t be too sure. Rabbits, for instance, can be worse than you expect:
I can’t see all these JB posts but oh boy. Yeah, there’s nothing about vaccination that has to do with Christ. Fella died long before Pasteur.
We’ve got a situation now where this whole process is so bolloxed that I don’t even know how you’re supposed to be a good citizen. I’m getting emails now from local pharmacies shouting that they’ve got free boosters. I suppose I now count as someone who works in an institutional setting, or will do again as soon as my boss quits (hey, could be next week!) and I get a more normal boss (thankfully, probably not for at least a month). But when I click through their “do you qualify” business it’s clear that nobody’s checking anything. I could walk in tomorrow and do it. And given that they don’t seem to be able to keep their minds made up for two days in a row, maybe I’d be stupid not to do it.
The infuriating thing is that if you took the equivocating and straightforward anti-vaxxers out of the equation, this would all be going pretty smoothly.
(JB, don’t waste your breath, can’t see ya.)
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Nope. I’m arguing that public funding should go to the public good - not someone’s whim. On the off chance that your son or his GF gets a BT infection W/O a booster, they are overwhelmingly unlikely to end up in the hospital unless they have underlying co-morbidities. The funding should be spent on more efficacious efforts than boosters for healthy people who have been vaxed - or perhaps it can be saved for the next health emergency or returned to the tax payers.
Those vials should be used, obviously - they can be donated to the world-wide effort along with the others just ordered to be shipped overseas.
Do they offer extra vaccine shots even if “fully vaxed” against some disease or other? I thought not.
No, they can’t be donated to the worldwide effort. That is the point. Once vials are distributed from the US stockpile to any distribution center, whether retail, municipal, etc, they are used or discarded. Those are the rules
My company is seeing $50k hospital bills in noncomplicated breakthru cases, so if we can prevent even one of those by using the cheap boosters, it makes sense to do so.
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So you are thinking there is no connection between acting for the public good and acting as a follower of Christ? Most Christians would probably disagree with that.
Exactly. And the young ones are more likely to have young children at home.
I actually woke up angry this morning thinking about a colleague, a prof who works in administration here, whose beautiful little child died of flu a couple of years ago; the death nearly took her marriage down with it. And every day she’s supposed to go in and pretend that what our university is doing is fine.
The only useful thing I can thing of here is that the answer to the question “how far will my university’s administration go to please the state govt and hang onto a couple ten million in funding annually?” is “Killing people. Students, employees, family of students and employees, doesn’t matter.” And once you hit that endpoint, things become very clear. You know that there is nothing that will be protected. Not speech, not intellectual freedoms, not the rights of international students or immigrants, not minorities, not women, nothing.
So: today is resume and cover letter day.
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It’s a shame that the rules are so inflexible. Perhaps that’s the problem. Or that someone made the wrong purchasing decision. These vaccines really shouldn’t be a clearance item for the privileged, educated or clever. They should go to those who need them most.
When my D was at UChicago this spring, a nearby clinic in Englewood put out an APB to get students vaccinated and bring a friend because stuff was expiring. They also did a mass canvassing of the neighborhood and brought people in they met on the street. This isn’t a task for those who don’t like working with marginalized people, but it needs to be done in order to reach them effectively. I have another daughter working in a high school with a large majority of POC and the vax rates are minimal. They are trying to reach out to those kids but it’s pretty clear that the public health institutions haven’t been particularly caring about them over the past summer.
Remember: The number of white evangelicals who are vaccine hesitant is equal to the number of AA’s who are the same. Reach one group - choose your group! - and you will cut the problem in half.
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