Getting vaccinated is hardly a medical procedure and MANY business, whether government or private sector, have been mandating vaccinations for decades. My kid’s employer states flat out that employees will be fired if they don’t get vaccinated for flu. Nothing about covid.
I don’t seem to hear people complain about all the other vaccines children and adults need to have in order to participate in all kinds of things, such as summer camp or school. Just the covid vaccine. It’s no coincidence that politicizing a public health issue has resulted in an uproar and I suspect that there will be damage to public health for decades as a result.
The antivax movement is delighted to have this issue as a mascot. I’m not looking forward to the return of polio and other diseases, which most people didn’t mind vaccinating their kids against. This terrible antivax trend is going to result in more death. It’s children who will pay for their parents’ poor judgement.
NYTimes has an article this morning on the persistent partisan gap in vaccination rates. It notes that some of the demographic gaps in vaccination rates (race and ethnicity, for example) have narrowed substantially, while the partisan gap has not.
It also alludes a particularly twisted conservative theory . . . The scheming left is supposedly manipulating conservatives into not getting vaccinated by using reverse psychology. The left knows that whatever it tells the right, the right will believe the opposite. So if the left tells the right that vaccinations are safe, effective, and necessary, then the right will believe the opposite and act accordingly.
The endgame? Kill off conservative voters. Or rather, convince them to kill off themselves by trying to persuade them to get vaccinated, take precautions, etc.
It’s bizarro-world logic, but perhaps the silver lining is that maybe a few more conservatives have started to realize that isn’t worth dying just to “own the left."
Before 1968, both live attenuated and inactivated measles vaccines were available. If he was vaccinated with the inactivated measles vaccine, or was vaccinated before 1968 and does not know which type, he may want to consider revaccination for measles or MMR, because the inactivated measles vaccine was less effective.
It boggles my mind. Blaming their anti-vaxx actions on the people who encourage and implore them to get vaccinated? Reminds me of the battle of wits scene from The Princess Bride –
I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool. You would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me…
On a running forum I frequent, an anti-vaxxer posted that the death rate per 100,000 from COVID is lower than that from falls, poisonings, motor vehicle crashes, and choking. Only problem is that she was comparing ANNUAL rates from all those other causes to DAILY rates for COVID. I wonder how many times nonsense like this is posted without anybody noticing the error.
So…what about vaccine reluctance for boosters for those who received the two Pfizer or Moderna shots or one J and J? I know a lot of folks who are waiting to decide on whether or not to get a booster…many in their 30’s or 20’s because there is little support for waning in that age group of healthy folks. Is that right?
Depends on when they received their last dose in part. Moderna and J/J are holding up better, probably ok to wait with those. But it all depends on one’s own assessment of risk level IMO. People in their 20s and 30s are still getting really sick and dying. My 18 year old DC had last Pfizer mid-March. Has asthma. I will have DC get booster when comes home for Thanksgiving. Other DC, 17, can’t get the booster so will have to wait quite a while.
Based on chatter on the “booster” thread, many of the posters there are the opposite of “vaccine reluctant” in that they are rushing to get as much vaccine as they can.
Of those who got vaccinated, some may not think it is that big a priority to get an additional dose even when it is approved for them, perhaps because they feel that going from unvaccinated to vaccinated is a bigger difference in COVID-19 vulnerability reduction than going from vaccinated to vaccinated+1.
You can’t compare apples to apples if it the answer isn’t what you want it to be.
What I still wonder is how many people are sitting at home getting their kicks out of making this stuff up, putting it out there, and seeing how far it spreads.
I was chatting with a (vaccinated) acquaintance when she said she heard that 1 in 500 people died of the vaccine. I said that sounded impossible and she was surprised because most people she told were surprised at how high it was. I looked up CDC data and gave her the actual (way way way lower) numbers.
I asked where she heard it and she said on tv. I asked which channel and she said she wasn’t sure, she watched several different ones. Oh then, it must be true.
Then she discussed how her son, who is in the insurance department in a hospital, told her how doctors and hospitals are marking tons of deaths as Covid even if death was from something else just to get Federal money. Therefore deaths were way overstated. I told her there had been some of that discussion last year but there was no evidence of widespread practice being reported. She decided her son was telling her the truth.
First of all, doctors and hospitals don’t get paid if someone dies, so marking their cause of death as COVID or non-COVID doesn’t result in different payments. Second, and probably this person doesn’t understand because they are dealing with the paper side of medicine, a person can die from any number of causes: kidney failure, stroke, pneumonia, PE, MI, etc that occur “naturally”. But now, patients are coming to the hospital with COVID, which can then cause the kidney failure, stroke, pneumonia, PE, MI, etc. In the latter, the cause of death is COVID, because if it weren’t for the infection, they wouldn’t have had the sequela.
Ask her to go through the local obituaries in the newspaper and count the number of deaths from the virus versus the vaccine and have her get back to you.
I finished by 2 Moderna vaccines February 10. I FULLY believe in the vaccination process but am not rushing to get a booster or third shot (different than an actual booster). I received my Moderna vaccines through my employer, a health system and there is not an official plan yet for staff - patient care or not - to distribute boosters. They have said they would when recommendations are solid but at this time for me - Moderna, under 65, no health conditions - there is not a recommendation to do that.