Actually, private insurance is paying for many of the boosters given, along with the usual Medicare for the elderly. The public funded the development of the vaccine and distribution for those without insurance. If private insurance companies didn’t want the booster given, they wouldn’t pay for it. The insurance companies strongly support boosters as much cheaper than paying for any
Covid treatment.
I am glad many European countries were able to boost without waiting for an EU bureaucratic agency to approve it. National level approval worked just fine.
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Both GF and my son are currently eligible being front line workers and being 8 months post last dose.
I trust their medical judgments far more than yours, on pretty much any medical topic. He’s had years of study and experience. I suspect you’re getting yours from news sources you like.
This is probably because you don’t live on a farm. Here myself and two of my kids have had “extra” tetanus vaxxes due to bites or injuries that have come before the 10 year “expiration” date of our previous vax. The doctor said he was giving them, “just to be sure.” That’s 3/5ths of our immediate family. I doubt we’re singled out by our doctor or that he did anything out of line medically.
I expect all doctors would recommend this, but the only way one is going to get bitten by a chipmunk is if they were trying to feed or handle it.
We’ve had non-farm people come to our farm and they really don’t understand animals at all - wild or domestic. Seeing a chipmunk during the day, on a porch or even in a house, or anything similar is not out of line with their behavior, yet some will ask, “Is that common? What if they have rabies?” They don’t, but those without animal experience only “know” what they’ve heard in stories or seen on TV. It’s very much like your thought with bats under a bridge. A story somewhere makes the news, then the mind expands upon it, because the oodles of “normal” stories happening daily don’t make the news.
This is certainly true - and in one direction is pretty harmless. In the other I’ve seen it be deadly - as has my son plus his GF.
Interestingly enough, neither my son nor his GF (nor us) have been locked away in fear. We’re vaccinated and trusting the vaccines to help our bodies (boosters too soon). Today on his FB account he posted a video of him juggling fire with his juggling club at an event. For the group pic where they are all together, he, and many others, were masked.
We also scuba dive, fly, swim in the ocean, hike in forests, go to second and third world countries (including in the Middle East), and many other things some folks are fearful of. We don’t use our cell phone or drink alcohol while driving though, and we always wear seat belts. Some chances just aren’t worth taking. Being unvaxxed is one of them.
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Note that the insurance reimbursement for your COVID shot only includes the administration of that shot, not the shot itself. The public did pay for the vaccine itself. Normally a provider receives two payments for a vaccine given - one for the medication/vaccine, one for administration. For COVID they only receive the administration portion (roughly $45 per shot).
Totally. This is a thing a lot of the “gotta live” contingent seem to miss (while, ironically, doing exactly the thing that sharply reduces their and their transmission victims’ odds of living if/when they get covid). I really doubt that many of them would willingly live on the edge to the extent I have. Apart from the middle-class physical derring-do – private pilot (aerobatics are fun!), hiking, hiking stupid (did you know they get hurricanes in Scotland, too? Ask me how I know!), bike commuting in London in the '80s, traveling solo well before this was normal for young women, etc. – and forms of emotional courage (how naked do you want to be in front of how many people? Also, don’t even talk to me till you’ve taught aerobics in a bespoke harlequin unitard with a tape that includes Dr. John) – I raised and housed a child solely on freelance work paying $15-50/hr for most of a decade. No idea where the money was coming from three months down the line. That one wasn’t voluntary, but courage it certainly did involve. She didn’t know she was poor, assumed we weren’t because we didn’t live in the public-housing complex, only recently discovered that we’d actually been quite poor, benefits-eligible, through most of her childhood. Taught her to navigate public transit on her own when she was 12. And for her 16th birthday, I took her to Chicago, then sent her and a friend off to Lollapalooza. They went and got on the train themselves, found their way, found their way back.
When the text came up telling me I was eligible to sign up for the vaccine, though, I practically broke my finger stabbing the phone to get through to grab that appointment.
It’s a question of knowing what to be scared of, what to respect. My grandma used to swim in the ocean, carefully, and told me that you have to respect the ocean, which is true. It’s much, much more powerful than you are, and there’s no sentience or design there that’s to do with caring about you. Viruses too can kill and maim, and the bad ones are wildly efficient at it. They don’t negotiate. They aren’t supernatural, and they aren’t anthropomorphizable. That’s why the global network of pandemic hunters and response coordinators seem really OTT dystopian-sci-fi loonytunes but in fact are not (as is being demonstrated now). If you actually care about your life and your responsibilities, and think they’re worth defending, you’ll take dangerous pathogens extremely seriously.
I do get that a lot of people are averse to carefully imagining what bad things happening to them would be like, what the experience and consequences might be, and equate it to inviting these things. (I had to tell my lawyer that she didn’t have to tread carefully with lines like “after you die” and had very cheerful discussions with her about what a motherless child with an irresponsible father might need, also the reasonable reach of my will past the grave.) Here, though, I think that impulse isn’t terribly helpful. If you don’t imagine what disabling illness is, how it can rob you of years, your mind, your self – what burden of obligation, expense, and life-crippling it lays on the people who will take care of you, how often caregivers find they have to abandon the post to save themselves, and what the consequences of not having such people around might be – or what your own maiming and death might mean for others, then…well, it doesn’t help you recognize how serious this is, or how scary you ought to think covid is.
Large but weirdly diffuse study out though the other day saying that odds of long covid are cut in half in breakthrough cases with delta, though. That’s still substantial odds of long-term effects, but I’ll see if I can find it.
If they are paying for vaccine, they are incompetent. The federal government is paying 100% for all vaccines, first, second or third dose, for any warm body in the US – residents, undocumented, visitors, even & tourists if they are interested… The feds do allow individual providers (local docs, CVS, Walgreen’s Costco, et al) to add on a jab fee and bill insurance carriers for that. But you can go into most any pharmacy, not show an insurance card, and get a jab. Our local CVS even asks if you want to skip the insurance input page.
This is barely an article, but it does hint at ways to overcome vaccine reluctance. Hope they figure more out! Can AI Explain Vaccine Hesitancy? | Columbia Magazine
My son got a rabies vaccine when he went for his junior year abroad in Jordan, the reasoning being was that on some field trips it might take quite a while to get to a hospital where he could be treated.
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It will be interesting to see what happens in CT tomorrow…which is the date folks working in schools either need to show proof of vaccine OR agree to weekly testing. It is speculated that hundreds of school bus drivers will decline and won’t be driving the buses this week. Of course, we will have to wait and see what happens.
Not in this round. MMR, yes, but it was before vax resistance had hardened and become part of a political movement the way it did after 2010 or so. This time around I’ve been able to have some real conversation about science with earnest people, but it snaps off when you hit core identity/tribe things about who the good guys are.
I think the difference here is that much of the old MMR-anti-vax stuff really did used to be about science – it was fear generated by that fraudulent Wakefield report and amped by others, and it connected hard with natural-living and anti-GMO/big-pharma/big-government tropes, plus who enjoys bringing in your baby, who trusts you, for shots. Especially if the nurses are rough. Heartbreak every time. But in the end the moms really were scared that the vax would make the kids autistic (and it was 20 years before today’s understanding of what “autistic” means). So you’d get “yes I understand, sort of” with the science opposed by “but what if it’s true?”
But yeah. This isn’t about science.
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For my daughter, I just kept pointing out all the things she either had to do (wear masks at work) or things she wouldn’t be able to do (go to Hawaii, go to restaurants, maybe fly on a plane soon?). She likes to travel and at first was willing to do the multiple tests required by some places, but finally realized how inconvenient it was and how much it would cost. I agreed with her that if she did get covid it was unlikely she would die, but that I hoped she wouldn’t test positive at a very inconvenient time, like when she was about to go on a vacation or to a wedding. Others in our family refused to let her into their houses or meet her for dinner. My brother just told her she was stupid.
She finally gave in, but because she’d dug her heals in so hard she didn’t tell me until she got her second shot, and then only to blame me because it made her slightly sick for about 6 hours. I gladly took the blame. She got to say “I told you I’d get sick” and I got to say “but you are alive.” We both felt vindicated.
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My daughter and her friends were asked to show proof of vaccination in a Portland bar this weekend. D had a laminated card ready to show, thanks to her dad’s insistence she carry one. Her friends didn’t have one, so they had to leave and go to a different place. That’s the first time I’ve heard of an establishment requiring proof in our area.
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I am a therapist with several vaccine-reluctant clients. One got vaccinated after her son got Covid, one after she herself got Covid, one for the $100, a few because you can’t go to restaurants or gyms without the vaccine.
Every session, I devoted a few minutes to education and then said, “hey, it’s still your choice, but I worry about you being not vaccinated.” Over the months, they all seem to have moved from totally negative to ambivalent, and the costs and benefits here in NYC pushed most of them over the line. I have a couple of clients who are immigrants who appear to be victims of some kind of propaganda videos and that’s a tougher egg to crack.
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I think anti big pharma is part of the reluctance. This person is a nurse so they should know better. They think that if people were treated early with medicines “approved in Europe” (ivermectin, etc) that it wouldn’t happen. They think big pharma is purposely denying us access to them. Big pharma is in business to make money, so I don’t get the logic.
They also said the vaccines are still in trial and don’t prevent catching or spreading Covid. As a nurse they should understand that’s not unusual for vaccines. By trial they seem to mean that when people go to get the vaccine some are given a placebo without their knowledge, but they ignore the fact that if that were true the number of “vaccinated” people who are dying would be much higher.
They think 99.9% of people survive if treated early with the proper medications (ivermectin, etc) and don’t seem to understand that the overall mortality rate and crude mortality rate aren’t the same as individual risk. They think 12,000 people have died as a direct result of the vaccine and that 400,000 have been injured by it even though fact checkers show those numbers are inaccurate and the basic premise appears to be false.
It’s not surprising that most of their information comes from social media and people whose PhDs aren’t in medicine. When pointed to reliable sources (scientists and doctors whose information can be verified) their response is that mainstream media lies. Yet somehow social media never does. I don’t think this is about the science.
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My county just implemented a “show your vax card” policy for all restaurants. I got carded on Friday.
Interesting dynamic:
(1) prominent signs saying “don’t take it out on our staff, the county is making us do this”
(2) it was 90-ish degrees outside, but people were eating outside - that’s where they put the unvaxed folks.
(3) I felt safer indoors, rightly or wrongly, and decided to eat indoors when I normally would have gone outside.
(4) I suspect the policy will be good for business around here (a high vax area), as indoor dining will be an option again for people.
(5) the segregation will be problematic. Forcing people to eat outside like second class citizens is going to set up a volatile environment. Some may decide the social pressure is sufficient incentive to get vaccinated, others will get angry.
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thanks for your efforts.
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It’s a NYT article, so could be firewalled, but this was an interesting read about Ivermectin misuse:
It really boggles my mind that people who won’t trust vaccines that have been tested on millions now, but will go get horse dewormers. They don’t want to take anything from Big Pharma, but Big Pharma makes Ivermectin.
One of those who died in NM was 38 (the other 79). Both had Covid. Could they have survived if they’d chosen otherwise? Quite likely, esp for the 38 year old.
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And are they gargling Betadine now, or something similar? I remember reading people were gargling something. As my friend at work says: “survival of the fittest”.
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I haven’t heard of Betadine being used, but I’d change survival of the fittest to survival of the more intelligent when it comes to many of these aspects.
Another NYT article talked about the red/blue divide on a county (not state) level. It’s really, really, sad. What a difference there could have been if the country had come together instead of using Covid as a deeper division between the polar ends.
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I believe that was her intent
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