I am just eligible for my booster and have been struggling with scheduling it. (I will get it) I’m only posting this to give everyone some insight into vaccine reluctance. My whole family is vaxxed except for my mother, who sends me ridiculous statistics and emails about people who have been vaxxed and still got Covid or were hospitalized or died several times per week. I keep responding that these are outliers/people with underlying conditions and that the vast majority of vaccinated people have mild cases, don’t end up in the hospital, don’t die. But I have to say-she is getting to me. I brought it up with my best friend, who is a pediatrician and to my surprise she said she completely understood-that she hears all day long from people with crazy reasons why they do not want to be vaxxed-and that it gets to her as well. At the end of the day, we’ll both get the booster but this disinformation culture is really insidious and exhausting. Especially after 2 years of this. I’m definitely covid-fatigued. I told my friend that I’m more afraid I will get the booster, drop dead, and give my mother the reason to say “I told you so” than I am afraid of actually dropping dead!
This makes me sad…we are planning a long road trip. DH suggested our first stop before at my BFF’s house…which is really a good first stopping point. Except….she is not vaccinated, and has no intention of ever getting vaccinated because she is sure she had Covid in December 2019.
Oh well…
If you remove 1/4th of FL’s per capita deaths to account for 1/4 more seniors per capita, you still have CO/FL per capita deaths at:
156/212
That’s not exactly equal or close to it either.
I’m way too busy today to look at each state’s demographic stats to see the comparison, but if someone else has time on their hands, it would be interesting to look at per capita for real numbers instead of easy math numbers.
Can you respond with things like these from Tidelands Health?
Things have improved considerably since I last looked at Tidelands. Here’s what I had last time I looked. It definitely shows a trend for vax vs not:
Or stats from your/her state?
I’m not sure where these assumptions are coming from. The vast majority of gun owners do not want criminals or people that are mentally ill to have guns. They do vastly support laws that are in place to keep these things from happening to prevent incidents.
Is she extremely careful? Does she mask and social distance? Does she socialize with other non-vaxxers?
Actually it is quite likely that non covid deaths from lockdown will exceed, in human years lost, those of actual covid deaths. Besides the obvious medical appointments and treatments that were delayed, McKinsey projected an additional one million high school dropouts, over the usual number, as some of the students who were remote never did return to class. Dropping out of high school is strongly correlated with poor social and economic outcomes and premature deaths. For many of the most vulnerable 12-18 year olds, the school lockdown will not be something they recover from.
Focusing on Florida’s numbers for this month is akin to using low tide levels to assess high tide flood damage.
And the presence of more elderly in Florida doesn’t come close to explaining the relative devastation caused by Delta virus there. The pattern holds for entire region, and for almost all other areas where preventative measures were not as widely implemented.
And when one examines whether the tens of thousands of lives lost due lax mitigation standards is it is worth it, it is important to keep in mind that the actual costs of mitigation is extraordinarily small. Tens of thousands of lives could have been (and can be) saved for a cost next to nothing.
We are starting to see…and hopefully count…the collateral damage…This is just one area…
Another area…we know a young man who had back pain. It wasn’t taken seriously and CT and MRI’s were put off. He has now been diagnosed with an advanced form of a very rare cancer. And that diagnosis ONLY occurred because he had some contacts who pushed for an MRI within days of the latests symptoms…instead of waiting until mid to late December which was the original 'plan.
Depends upon how one calculates the cost, doesn’t it? School lockdowns were enormously costly for the young, in terms of emotional health and future opportunities. That is why no other country in the world did school lockdowns as extensively as the US. Yes, they probably marginally saved some extra elderly lives, but we will feel the costs for the next 60 years for that generation. Really just a question of who bore the cost.
While I agree that school lockdowns were costly, this is a thread about vaccine reluctance. Vaccines (along with masks) have extremely low relative costs, and have been proven to be extremely effective in mitigating the damage done by covid. Yet many have (and continue to) pushed back against implementation of these measures, at a cost of tens of thousands of lives. That is to what I was referring, but I think you knew that.
@dietz199 These two examples are further reason why mitigation measures such as masks and vaccinations are so important. Vaccines and masks may not be perfect solutions but they allow more of a semblance of normal life and of normal functioning of our medical facilities.
Vaccine mandates only work if they are enforced. Since, the federal government is largely unwilling to do that, I am not sure why we would expect anyone else to do so.
And the goalposts move again.
If missing a year of school is so costly (and it is), why do our refugee students who have lost at least a year, often more than that, plus changed countries, lost loved ones, and had to learn a new language, still almost always manage to graduate and go on to do great things with their lives?
I credit the spin adults are putting on the situation. Kids “read” from that spin mentally.
FWIW, those from our school who didn’t show up for online classes aren’t those who were destined to go on to college. If they end up in a trade (where most of them go) sooner than graduation, it’s not necessarily anything lost IMO.
Drug abuse was rising prior to Covid. I really don’t think much of last year’s increase was due to Covid.
People and doctors putting off medical issues is definitely real and costly (as are domestic violence lives), though in numbers of lives, they could have been offset by the lives saved from fewer car crashes and other accidents. Stats folks will have to analyze a bit.
Through it all, there’s absolutely no doubt vaccines and better adherence to masks, etc, (with or without mandates) would have helped immensely with all ages. I’m glad vaccines came through as quickly as they did. Countless lives were saved among those who didn’t fall prey to misinformation.
30% of hospital based HCPs were unvaccinated as of Sept 15. The number of unvaccinated is probably somewhat lower now due to mandates, but surprising and sad nonetheless.
Among the hospital-based HCP included in this analysis, COVID-19 vaccine coverage increased steadily between the time of vaccine introduction (December 2020) and April 2021, but the rate of uptake has slowed, and a substantial proportion of HCP remain unvaccinated; as of September 15, 2021, among 3,357,348 HCP in 2,086 facilities included in this analysis, 70.0% were fully vaccinated.
https://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553(21)00673-8/fulltext
Not too surprising, since trust in others and institutions is low and declining in the US.
However, note that vaccination rates differ between different kinds of health care workers. Physicians have very high vaccination rates, followed by nurses. But many other health care workers do not fall into these professions (e.g. nursing home aides), and are probably lower paid and less trusting of their employers (probably less so than nurses, who commonly do not trust their employers, since they commonly have unions that threaten to strike or actually strike each time their contract is about to expire). Lower paid health care workers who do not trust their employers are more likely to reflexively oppose their employers’ recommendations or requirements for vaccination, even at the cost of their own health and that of the patients they care for.
These data are for hospital based HCPs only, so doesn’t include nursing homes workers.
I was talking about Colorado’s rates right now, not since the beginning of covid. There were times in the last week when there were fewer than 100 ICU beds available in the state. Florida is currently doing better than that (of course it has almost 3X the population).
@bennty said she’d be out and about if she lived in a state where the governor took covid seriously, and I was just pointing out that was no guaranty. The Colorado governor took it seriously and allowed the boosters for everyone (no age minimum), but covid still took off here in October (weather couldn’t have been nicer to be outdoors) and November (still nice weather until yesterday). Wyoming, to the north, has few covid rules (like masks or vaccine requirement) and has a similar covid rate to ours.
Still, there are plenty of health care workers in hospitals who are not physicians or nurses.
In general, vaccination is highly correlated to years of training.