I just read this article. I agree with the Hospital’s decision.
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When believing Fake News turns really bad 
:
I believe that’s more likely from mental illness than anything else.
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This is one of our local hospital systems and I also agree with their decision.
Mental illness triggered by fear caused by fake news, alas.
If the brother had heard “your pharmacist brother is saving lives every day”, would he have killed him?
The trigger is clearly fear of vaccines and only a fake news ecosystem can have created that fear.
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Mental illness for sure, but I seriously doubt his mental illness would have had him killing his brother, SIL, and the other lady if he hadn’t been fixated on the Fake News out there regarding the vaccines.
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BBC has this informative article about Ivermectin studies. I knew the studies being promoted for its followers weren’t solid. I didn’t know why. I’m glad there are people looking into it:
"The BBC can reveal that more than a third of 26 major trials of the drug for use on Covid have serious errors or signs of potential fraud. None of the rest show convincing evidence of ivermectin’s effectiveness.
Dr Kyle Sheldrick, one of the group investigating the studies, said they had not found “a single clinical trial” claiming to show that ivermectin prevented Covid deaths that did not contain “either obvious signs of fabrication or errors so critical they invalidate the study”.
Major problems included:
The same patient data being used multiple times for supposedly different people
Evidence that selection of patients for test groups was not random
Numbers unlikely to occur naturally
Percentages calculated incorrectly
Local health bodies unaware of the studies
The scientists in the group - Dr Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, Dr James Heathers, Dr Nick Brown and Dr Sheldrick - each have a track record of exposing dodgy science. They’ve been working together remotely on an informal and voluntary basis during the pandemic.
They formed a group looking deeper into ivermectin studies after biomedical student Jack Lawrence spotted problems with an influential study from Egypt. Among other issues, it contained patients who turned out to have died before the trial started. It has now been retracted by the journal that published it.
…
Out of a total of 26 studies examined, there was evidence in five that the data may have been faked - for example they contained virtually impossible numbers or rows of identical patients copied and pasted.
In a further five there were major red flags - for example, numbers didn’t add up, percentages were calculated incorrectly or local health bodies weren’t aware they had taken place.
On top of these flawed trials, there were 14 authors of studies who failed to send data back. The independent scientists have flagged this as a possible indicator of fraud.
The sample of research papers examined by the independent group also contains some high-quality studies from around the world. But the major problems were all in the studies making big claims for ivermectin - in fact, the bigger the claim in terms of lives saved or infections prevented, the greater the concerns suggesting it might be faked or invalid, the researchers discovered.
While it’s extremely difficult to rule out human error in these trials, Dr Sheldrick, a medical doctor and researcher at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, believes it is highly likely at least some of them may have been knowingly manipulated.
A recent study in Lebanon was found to have blocks of details of 11 patients that had been copied and pasted repeatedly - suggesting many of the trial’s apparent patients didn’t really exist.
The study’s authors told the BBC that the “original set of data was rigged, sabotaged or mistakenly entered in the final file” and that they have submitted a retraction to the scientific journal which published it.
Another study from Iran seemed to show that ivermectin prevented people dying from Covid.
But the scientists who investigated it found issues. The records of how much iron was in patients’ blood contained numbers in a sequence that was unlikely to come up naturally.
And the patients given the placebo turned out to have had much lower levels of oxygen in their blood before the trial started than those given ivermectin. So they were already sicker and statistically more likely to die.
But this pattern was repeated across a wide range of different measurements. The people with “bad” measurements ended up in the placebo group, the ones with “good” measurements in the ivermectin group.
The likelihood of this happening randomly across all these different measurements was vanishingly small, Dr Sheldrick said."
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Here is an excerpt of another vaccine hesitant NBA player explaining his decision to get vaccinated. He sounds like he is still not convinced and I am surprised at the level of the distrust.
Golden State Warriors swingman Andrew Wiggins on Monday explained his decision to get the COVID-19 vaccine, noting that he felt “forced” to do so in order to continue his NBA career.
“The only options were to get vaccinated or not play in the NBA,” Wiggins said after the Warriors’ preseason opener at the Portland Trailblazers, his first public comments since getting the shot. “It was a tough decision. Hopefully, it works out in the long run and in 10 years I’m still healthy.”
The answer is that the NBA decided that you can’t get paid when you refuse to be vaccinated and are playing in a venue/city that requires you be vaccinated.
So as someone always says, the answer to all of your questions is money.
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The problem is that there is a loophole in the NYC and SF laws where unvaccinated players from visiting teams can play. So there are players who are not vaccinated who will still play at those venues. Something seems off about that if public health is the #1 reason for these laws.
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In the past few weeks, anti-vaxxers have rallied behind a nonpeer-reviewed study by a group of Canadian researchers as evidence against COVID-19 vaccines. Turns out, the paper made a fatal mistake in reaching its conclusion.
Scientists at The University of Ottawa Heart Institute have retracted the preprint study, which falsely calculated a 1 in 1,000 risk of heart inflammation for Moderna’s and Pfizer-BioNTech’s mRNA COVID vaccines.
The study authors have withdrawn the manuscript “because of a major error pertaining to the quoted incidence data,” the team said in a retraction statement on Sept. 24.
For the research, the team collected two months of data from the Public Health Agency of Ottawa on people who had received an mRNA COVID-19 shot and calculated the incidence of myocarditis or pericarditis—inflammation of the heart muscle or the heart’s membrane—within one month after vaccination.
RELATED: Pfizer, Moderna COVID-19 vaccines will get label warning over rare heart risk, FDA says
In the original paper, published on the preprint site medRxiv on Sept. 16, they identified 32 patients with the heart problem and 32,379 doses administered in total, leading to an estimated 1 in 1,000 rate.
However, the actual number of administered doses during the period was over 800,000, the researchers note in their retraction statement. That would put the correct incidence rate at about 1 in 25,000, or 4 in 100,000. A recent peer-reviewed study based on data in Israel has put the risk of myocarditis for Pfizer and BioNTech’s Comirnaty at 2.7 events per 100,000 persons.
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I’m a bit confused. I thought we were talking about Andrew Wiggins who plays for the Golden State Warriors. I thought if he wasn’t vaccinated, he wasn’t going to be able to play any home games and it was unclear if he would even be allowed in the building to practice. He would have to give up at least 1/2 of his salary in that case. I suspect that wasn’t a hill he was willing to die on.
I did not know that there was a loophole for visiting players. Hopefully that loophole will be closed soon.
There is an exception in SF for visiting players, but not sure if that’s true in NYC and Boston, two other cities requiring vaccinations for players.
I’m glad the Wiggins thought losing half his salary was too high a price to pay. It is very hard to get by on just $16M when all your friends are making double that.
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Here in San Diego it was reported that an unvaccinated women and her unborn child died from Covid. Very sad.
A 56 year old lady from our church just died. She had kids and grandkids she won’t get to spend time with now. I wish more people who “trust God” would trust that He gave the researchers incredible minds to come up with vaccines.
Maybe it will encourage more to get the vaxxes? At this point I think deaths of people they know might be the only encouragement if mandates haven’t worked.
The majority of deaths now are so needless. I know many feel they will be fine given the odds out there, but reality shows us we just don’t know who is going to be fine and who isn’t. It’s possible to significantly better ones odds. At this point I’m guessing her family wishes she had.
I don’t think that is even going to work. One of my favorite psychological studies is on the beliefs of cult members. When predictions of the cult leaders (the world will end on Jan 27, after you have given me all of your worldly possession, in preparation for a spaceship landing to take away the true believers) fail, cult members’ beliefs in the cult and cult leaders gets stronger, not weaker.
What I’m wondering about is the nurses and doctors in places with low vax rates. The articles suggest, understandably, that many are demoralized and sometimes even shell-shocked. Understandable. What surprises me is that many haven’t moved to an area where people seem to be working on post-Enlightenment reasoning rather than pre-Enlightenment reasoning. I know that there are nurse shortages and I’m guessing doctor shortages in lots of places.
Doctors have certainly chosen to be guided by the existing data: https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-survey-shows-over-96-doctors-fully-vaccinated-against-covid-19
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Not that many people have the resources to simply move, and many have ties to nearby schools and communities. At least here, the health care workers are no longer overwhelmed, as delta has swept through and burned out, as it was predicted to do. I do think ERs no longer feel the same sense of urgency regarding covid victims-I am sure they try their best, but a recognition that the victims chose this path mitigates the emotional impact.
I found out this morning I lost another co-worker over the weekend. Different floor, but someone who’s worked with me from time to time for almost 25 years. With everything being hush hush, I didn’t even get to know they were sick until it was too late.
My doctor doesn’t feel that way and said her colleagues don’t either. The impact is worse because we have a tool to prevent the physical suffering and death, but the medical community hasn’t been able to convince everyone to take advantage of it. She said many people ask for the vaccine after they fall seriously ill, but by then it’s too late. It’s emotionally wrenching to have to explain to the patients and their families who are begging for the vaccine that it’s too late, and no, there aren’t any magic medicines that will save them. Family after family after family.
Add to that the stress they have caring for non-covid patients. How do they keep their vulnerable patients safe? What if a patient needs medicine or a procedure and they can’t get it because the system is overtaxed with Covid patients? How do they address the rising young adult suicide rates? It’s horrible. She hears similar stories from other doctors on the AMA message boards. Doctors are tired, suffering from PTSD, and many could probably use counseling. Unfortunately, right now there’s no time for it and there’s no end in sight.
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Your hospitals are still overwhelmed with covid patients? The spike seems to last about 2-3 months. The covid rates are down almost everywhere now in the US