I got the barcode thing on my phone. QR code maybe ? Check your state’s health dept. website to see if they have it yet. Or simply take a pic of your vaccine card on your phone.
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She already answered. Vaccination is the bright line. Because that’s what vaccination is about. People get vaxxed, their odds of transmitting a public-health-bad-thing virus plummet, regardless of what else they do. There isn’t error involved along the lines of “just once” and “I forgot my mask” and whatnot.
It’s about how transmission works (and ends), not morality. I don’t care why you do or don’t get vaccinated. I do care whether or not you do it.
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Things are getting heated. Time to slow down the thread.
Better idea to avoid triage ? Pease share asap the doctors in Salzburg.
A worried family member of someone just diagnosed with cancer.
Presumably, they are not the posters (in the booster thread) who rushed to try to get boosters before the FDA and CDC issued any recommendations for such; if they were, then they would be delighted to get more vaccine without anyone being able to tell them they already had their vaccine.
Adults are responsible for their own medical decisions and maintaining their own medical records. California has joined Colorado in making boosters available to all regardless of the current FDA status. Adults who wish to keep track of their vax status have several options in doing so, and I would not count on the government’s support for any of them. So make a copy, take a photo, whatever you need to do to ensure you can prove your vax status without another’s help.
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Rumors that FDA may approve Pfizer booster for all adults this week. Maybe they feel like they should act before all 50 states open up boosters to all adults first!
The Food and Drug Administration is aiming to authorize booster doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for all adults as early as Thursday, a move that would expand the number of Americans eligible for additional shots by tens of millions, according to people familiar with the agency’s plans.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent committee of vaccine experts has scheduled a meeting for Friday to discuss data on the booster dose’s efficacy and safety. If both the F.D.A. and the C.D.C. sign off this week, they will have acted strikingly quickly — a little more than a week after Pfizer asked for authorization of boosters for everyone 18 and older.
Under that scenario, any adult who received a second dose of the vaccine at least six months earlier would be officially eligible to get a booster as soon as this weekend. The F.D.A. is expected to rule without consulting its own expert panel, which has met frequently during the pandemic to review vaccine data and make a recommendation ahead of a regulatory decision.
Moderna is expected to soon submit its own request for the F.D.A. to broaden eligibility for its booster. But for now, every adult could get the Pfizer booster, according to people familiar with the planning.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/us/politics/fda-pfizer-booster-shots-adults.
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I don’t understand …?
From the NYT, the current covid situation shown in graphic form. This is where Delta has progressed to currently. It marched it’s way on across the US and it really doesn’t stop anywhere until it burns through an area.
My questions are philosophical. I am fully vaccinated. I do have to work in-person every day with a mixture of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. I also have to travel by air for work. I do choose many times to eat inside restaurants. I do chose to go to sometimes crowded events, mostly outside but would inside too depending on what it was. I’m not being overly cautious, I’m mostly trusting my vaccine. That being said perhaps someone that is being more cautious deserves an ICU bed before me if I do catch covid and there is a shortage. It can be interesting to ponder especially since many here feel like being fully vaccinated should be the only deciding factor yet we have a range of people taking different precautions otherwise.
Back to vaccine reluctance and pondering. Below is the current demographic data for NYC. A few things stick out to me. First, there are lower percentages of elderly vaccinated than many younger age groups. Would people here advocating for these measures be ok turning away these unvaccinated elderly over a much younger patient simply off of their vaccination status?
The second thing that sticks out are the vaccination rates by race. There is a wide disparity between rates and certain races. Again, given the desire by some to ration care based off of vaccination status, would those advocating be inclined to turn away more black people from ICUs? Looks like most native Americans would be in good shape in this proposed reality.
I get the sentiment of saying these people don’t deserve the front of the line because of their personal choices. I do wonder how the people of NYC would react if they were told this was going to he the case. Does anyone think that would go over well? Turning away people from ICUs based off of their vaccination status could certainly be seen as turning away more elderly or possibly certain minorities instead. I’m not convinced those optics would he popular with many Americans. I could he way off base though. I do like to think about things like this though, potentially unintended consequences.
No, I’m not for shutting out individuals in times of need based simply off of their vaccination status. There are vaccine hesitant people in many areas, in many walks of life for various reasons. I’m not ready to dismiss a group of people because they may potentially have a deep rooted distrust in the government because of past events where their race was specifically targeted for being infected just to study the effects (Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis). I’m not ready to dismiss other groups (the elderly) either for whatever reasons they may have including an inability to get an appointment based off of potential inaccessibility of a computer, etc. Unintended consequences.
I don’t like the idea of turning people away based simply off of vaccine status. Obviously it may come to be that it does happen in situations where a hospital is full or if some here get their wish. It certainly is an interesting topic to think about but it’s way more complicated than it seems at first glance in my opinion.
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I liked this pithy response from Carolyn Hax, an advice columnist I respect:
Q: Should I break up with my boyfriend for refusing to get vaccinated?
A: At this point? Yes. Critical thinking skills count.
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You save beds, even if an unvaxxed person comes and there are 2 left, because there WILL be vaxxed people who had a heart attack who didn’t choose to play Russian roulette. That person who had a heart attack shouldn’t pay for another person’s choice. Same principle as for a transplant. You only transplant an alcoholic if there is no healthy person above them on the list.
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Compounding this problem is that usually it’s not just a matter of having an actual room. Along with the bed and the room you must have adequate staff who are experienced in ICU nursing. You can’t just throw a licensed nurse in there and say “okay, we have adequate staffing.” ICU is a very complicated specialty that requires significant extra education/training/experience.
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An online friend who’s an excellent doctor was appalled when he was informed he would have to cover in the ICU. “You don’t want ME taking care of you!” he wrote.
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So in times when hospitals are full, who do you put at the end of the line? Someone needs to be there. Who do you choose?
In times when there is plenty of space I don’t think anyone has said to turn people away.
Where medical lad is and several places around him they won’t transplant an alcoholic - not with a new liver anyway - even when a match turns up - I think he said it was a living donor, but I was listening to one of many stories so maybe it was a deceased match and there was a healthier alternative. He ran into that situation a month or two ago. The family was calling around everywhere and the dude promised to give up his daily bottle, but no one agreed with him. (Living donor would fit that scenario better, so my memory might be correct.) The guy passed away. I felt bad for him family, but understand the limit.
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I really just mean to keep beds and doctors for the emergencies, heart attacks, children, older people… who will need care. Hospitals have a pretty good idea how many “regular” patients come for various illnesses and ailments and how many beds are needed. Some adjustment due to covid is normal, but there shouldn’t be a hospital where someone is turned away or sent home because entire wings have been turned over to covid and they’re entirely full of covid patients and/or all doctors are working on covid patients so that there’s no space and no staff to operate or monitor people who need it. There should be space for regular (vaxxed and unvaxxed) patients, even if it means some covid patients are going to be turned away. Knowing the hospital can’t take any more covid patients might also encourage people who refused or have worried about the vaccine to take social distancing measures.
I really feel for the old man who didn’t have a computer to make an appointment. My parents and my inlaws would all be in that situation: they don’t have a smart phone, they get really frustrated with computers and often confused. The old man will come back but he’ll have to time it precisely to that 2 to 3pm slot and for old people, remembering can be difficult. Hopefully someone wrote it down for him and/or got his name to call him in the morning.
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Triage is already happening here, hidden, and I’m sure it’s happening in the US, too, only no none calls it that. It’s who the ambulance services are even taking with them.
A colleague told me her grandmother, 89, unvaxxed, recently died of covid, her uncle, the son, in his 60ies, also unvaxxed, is struggling on a vent, the aunt, of course not vaxxed either, is struggling at home, the cousins are trying to keep in touch over the phone. They had to call ambulance services three times and only by the third time the uncle was deemed sick enough to go, and they begged them to take the aunt, too, and they refused, not sick enough. She may die in her bed. This would not have happened in normal times.
She is sad for the three of them, and for her cousins, and wondering whether she should have engaged with them about their choice not to vax, but also says they will have to live, or die, as the case may be, with their choices. Two of them, of course, have already taken away an ICU bed from someone else. There are no vacancies left. None.
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Perhaps rationing is a more recognizable word to describe the situation?
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I was in the ER for the first time in 20+ years last week. I live in a small town (15K) and am told by relatives who work at the hospital that in pre Covid times there was typically little to no wait in the ER. I was triaged and they did use that word.
I waited 4 1/2 hours in a makeshift waiting room (the regular waiting room is now only for patients with respiratory symptoms and it was packed) to see a doctor. When I did finally see her, she was pretty angry (I could hear her explaining what my symptoms meant to the nurses) that I’d had to wait and there was a lot of talk about sending me to Harborview (a 2 hour car ride away) In the end, I didn’t have to go to the big city trauma center, and I am now just fine. Apparently, I got “lucky” (according to the ER dr.).
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Triage is a system of rationing, specifically based on how sick a patient is and what their chances of survival are, in a situation in which care cannot physically be offered to everyone (mass events, war, pandemics, not enough staff, not enough beds, etc). There is a lot of rationing in health care systems due to financial pressure in other ways happening all the time.
People on this thread are discussing this specific type of rationing, generally called triage, as if it were a philosophical problem to be solved by ethics committees at some point in the future. ICUs in parts of the US and Europe are full now, have been full many times within the last two years, and triage has been happening all this time, but not in ethics committees, with people with lots of degrees stroking their beards. No, it is some EMT kid in an ambulance trying to make the decision whether if they leave without taking that patient, will that patient did at home or not and and will it make a difference, knowing there may not even be a bed. It’s happening now. Who knows EMTs, hearing that a patient isn’t vaccinated, aren’t already thinking to themselves “**ck you.”.
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