Vaccine reluctance & General COVID Discussion

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5615

The “burden” is extraordinarily low, and it is not only the child’s health and safety which at issue.

But it is no use debating it. Los Angeles will precede without consulting either one of us, and given that there is scientific consensus that a higher rate of vaccinations among school children lowers positivity rates and the rate of sever infections, and has other positive impacts, Los Angeles is well within its police power to mandate the vaccines. Those in Los Angeles who don’t like it can make other arrangements or try to get the policy changed.

5616

A younger man worried about myocarditis from an mRNA vaccine could choose the J&J vaccine instead.

Meaning you had Pfizer or Moderna, but will get a J&J boost, or you had J&J and will get a Pfizer or Moderna boost?

5617

Me too. I gave my daughter the chickenpox vaccine when it had only been out for about a year.

The only issue I’d have is if I had a big child who was close to 12. Should that child get a full adult dose or a child’s dose? I’d speak to the doctor about it as maybe the dose doesn’t have anything to do with weight. But it wouldn’t be a question of whether to get it but which one to get.

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5618

Posting this only because the frequency of myocarditis in young males came up earlier today. This is an MD, MPH out of Pitt quoting this regarding myocarditis in young men. (Military was seeing >1/10K in men <20 y/o.)

I still believe wholeheartedly in these vaccines. I only hope that we are continuing to study for subsets of the population for whom variations may be needed

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image1334×750 92.5 KB

Taken from his posting on twitter (I know, I know).
https://twitter.com/walidgellad/status/1451267619559026692/photo/1

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

5619

" Los Angeles is well within its police power to mandate the vaccines."

That is correct. But current state law dictates that any such mandate must allow for religious and medical exemption, AND for personal exemptions. The latter is broad enuf to drive a truck thru, as my dad used to say. Thus, there will be plenty of non-vaxxed kids attending LA (and CA) schools.

(Eliminating the peronal exemptions for the covid vax requires legislative action to amend state law. Definitely doable, but have not read that the Legislature is taking it up yet.)

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5620

It’s certainly not so cut and dried with employment. Exemption doesn’t mean you get to stay in your job. Employers only have to make “reasonable accommodations” for religious observance. the accommodation isn’t “reasonable” if it imposes an undue financial or operational burden on the company. That’s an ill-defined standard, so the answer will depend on such things as the nature of the accommodation and the size of the company.

As the LA Times recently explained after discussion with legal experts ‘It’s important to bear in mind that if your employer mandates COVID-19 vaccinations, your religious objection, no matter how sincerely held, is no guarantee that you can keep your job. The employer is obligated to try to find a way to keep you at work unvaccinated, but whether that’s possible depends on what you do.

For example, if you can’t work from home, can’t socially distance from co-workers or customers, and can’t be tested frequently enough to assure the safety of those you come into contact with, your employer may have reason to replace you. “If you can’t perform the essential functions of the job even with accommodation, then there’s no accommodation that’s going to help you,”

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5621

The law that did this is here: Bill Text - SB-277 Public health: vaccinations.

However, see section 3, which added section 120338 to the Health and Safety Code. It basically means that new vaccination requirements added by the Department of Public Health need to have medical and personal belief exemptions, unlike those named in the law for which only medical exemptions are allowed. Of course, if new vaccination requirements are added legislatively, the legislature can write whatever exemptions or lack thereof it wants.

5622

I’m not sure he’s that worried about either myocarditis or getting boosted currently. He’s young and low risk, by age, his job, his social life and the fact that he’s already had 2 Pfizer doses. If he got boosted though J&J would be safest.

I have two friends who have had myocarditis that wasn’t vaccine related. By report, it’s not fun. Still, low risk, even at that age, with a third mRNA.

I had Pfizer and will get a Moderna boost. Any mix and match, even between the two mRNAs is considered heterologous. :+1:

The odd cognitive dissonance of all of this is that Mississippi is the most vaccinated state against school age childhood disease. The have a zero exemption policy, with the exception of verified medical, if kids want to attend public school.

5623

yes, I’m aware of required employer accommodations, maya, and have mentioned them several times way upthread…(perhaps you meant to reply to someone else?)

5624

Except it isn’t information. It’s misinformation, which people here debunk. Rinse, repeat.

What I’m not getting here is how “here’s more misinformation or not-great thinking” helps. If it’s supposed to be examples of what other people believe, why other people aren’t getting vaxed, you’re bringing in the ocean bucket by bucket. If it’s stuff you believe or are sympathetic to yourself, though…are you fact-checking, or looking for help in fact-checking, which is work for other people to do for you, so it’d be nice if you did it yourself before you post links and factoids? Or are you just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks? – and if so, what for?

As for “vaccine supporters”: If the evidence weren’t so strongly in favor of “yes vax”, I don’t think you’d be meeting such a wall of vax support here. There’s been rather vigorous discussion about whether boosters are worthwhile, and as the publications have come in, you’re seeing nearly all “yes boosters”, with an especially helpful link from @ucbalumnus to a paper demonstrating very prettily that most of the dropoff in efficacy can be ascribed to the rise of the more infectious delta variant, at least through August.

5625

Not sure why the need to personally attack me and what I posted? Easy enough to ignore.
I do not want to get censored by the moderators so will leave it at that.

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5626

Not meaning to attack, bluedog. I just don’t understand what the aim of these posts of yours is, especially if the links aren’t about ideas you subscribe to yourself. But I’ll leave it, too.

5627

I totally agree with that assessment. One family member who tested positive for Covid but was asymptomatic besides loss of taste/smell will not get vaccinated simply because they don’t want to. No religious objection, no worries any longer about the vaccine’s effectiveness, or a medical condition that would prevent being vaccinated. In our last conversation, she mentioned that she has no issue with anyone getting vaccinated to protect themselves from the 1% death rate or the ~30% who have long haul symptoms, but she is going to “roll with her natural immunity”. When I share that natural immunity has not shown to last as long or be as strong in all people, she asked me how many young people have caught Covid-19 a second time and had severe symptoms the 2nd time around ( I don’t know)? I move on to saying she can protect her Mom and other family members and she mentioned that her Mom has been vaccinated and is protected and so am I through Natural immunity. She ended with saying that every one needs to protect themselves how they see fit and she sees no reason to be vaccinated. In the my hometown, I see no vaccine mandate (work or government) that will compel her to get vaccinated.

We all better hope that Natural immunity works because if we have football coaches getting fired and losing 3 million dollars a year because he won’t be compelled by job loss to take a shot, I know that my reluctant family members (and some other reluctant Americans) will not be convinced to get vaccinated.

5628

Personally, I’m hoping natural immunity works enough so coupled with those who do opt for vaxxes we can push Covid back into oblivion.

It’s just sad that we lose so many people, stress out so many of our healthcare workers, and hurt others with different healthcare needs due to overcrowding getting to that point because of those who are “all about me.”

I know I’ve found I definitely judge and my family has changed our spending habits locally and nationally based upon how vocally selfish people and places are. We prefer to support those who care about others with our $$.

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5629

Would not be surprised if prior infection were roughly similar to vaccination in terms of immunity, meaning a much lower, but nonzero, risk of getting COVID-19 again.

However, those who had COVID-19 and then get vaccinated appear to get extra strong immunity, so they (and others they are in contact with) do benefit from getting vaccinated.

5630

This article just leaves me stunned with the beliefs that are out there, esp seeing how she got 186,000 votes holding her beliefs about Covid, etc. How does someone like this even win a Primary? (Because I know once at the “final election” other priorities - like party - can give one votes - and those aren’t what I’m addressing here - just the Covid aspect.) Are there that many others out there who share her Covid beliefs? Apparently there are.

"A Delaware Republican who said coronavirus vaccines were part of a satanic plan to cause “mass death” is recovering from COVID-19, she announced Thursday, saying the illness had caused her to lose “all of my senses.”

In a post on Gab, a social network popular with right-wing extremists, Witzke claimed she was “recovering from this insane bio-weapon called Covid.” The 33-year-old, who has worked as a political commentator for the right-wing Christian conspiracy site TruNews, said she had decided not to tell anyone earlier so as not to alert “the ____ in the media.”

“This bio-weapon is demonic,” she wrote. “I’ve lost all of my senses and struggle with constant indifference, brain fog, and I’ve lost my joy.”

In posts shared on her Telegram channel, Witzke blamed TruNews for making her aware of the infection, insisting that nasal swabs were ultimately responsible for her getting COVID-19. “I’m an idiot for submitting to their demands and getting tested,” she wrote, “and yes I know I need a good husband in my life to keep me from making bad decisions.”

She left the company in September.

Prior to her departure, Witzke attributed a June outbreak of COVID-19 among TruNews staff to a “demonic attack” for having hosted far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart writer who now claims to be “ex-gay.”

“I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the TruNews crew all got deathly ill, got very sick, right after they brought Milo on,” she said, as reported by PinkNews.

Witzke currently works with Stew Peters, an online broadcaster who has repeatedly pushed false claims about vaccines. On his program, Witzke herself claimed that COVID-19 vaccinations were a “mass death scale injection” that would precede the end of the world.

5631

Well this part is certainly true, but she may be off on the causation.

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5632

I think it was in this thread that someone made arguments that the vaccine mandates would not stand legal scrutiny. So far, they have.

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5633

You keep missing the nuance, shaw.

  • No one on this thread has suggested that states do not have the authority to issue a vax/mask mandate under their historical – back to the founding of the country – police powers, i.e., make laws for public health and safety.
  • No one on this thread has suggested that employers do not have the authority to issue a vax mandate in an effort to keep their employees safe, as long as they include medical and religious exemptions, and accommodations.
  • No one has suggested that colleges do not have the authority to require their students be vaccinated.
  • No one has suggested that OSHA does not have the authority to promulgate standards or rules for health and safety, including a vaccine mandate, thru its normal rule-making process.

OTOH, what some have suggested is that the federal government’s pending Emergency OSHA Order may not make it thru SCOTUS, which has historically been reluctant to approve EO’s. (Heck, back in the 80’s, the courts kicked OSHA’s EO concerning Asbestos which, by that time, everyone knew was hazardous to breathe.)

5634

You may not have suggested any of those things, but I think other posters have suggested some if not all of those things.