This is an anti-vax argument as old as time, and it's not a good one.
No vaccine, ever, has provided complete protection against being infected by the virus, later. They do provide a greatly reduced chance of such infection, and they generally make any such infection greatly reduced.
However, the thing that the anti-vaxxers just either can't understand, or they willfully choose to ignore because it undermines their position, is that even if they did provide full immunity, and the vaccinated were 100% safe from the infection, the choice to remain unvaccinated carries societal implications that effect everybody.
For instance, we will never achieve herd immunity, and any chance that the virus can be eliminated is lost. This is a bad argument for COVID, granted, because as a highly infectious respiratory illness, it probably can't be eradicated. But there is no arguing with the data that suggest that the vaxxed aren't filling our hospitals en mass, when the unvaxxed are.
However, there are further implications. The hospital where I live is over capacity right now with COVID patients. I went in a little bit ago with a nasty infection in my leg that had spread from ankle to knee and caused my leg to swell up so badly that my skin was starting to split. Under normal circumstances, I would have been admitted to the hospital for observation, since I am profoundly immuno-suppressed and the docs working on me were very concerned. However, no beds were available, so I got to play "fuck around and find out" with some oral antibiotics at home, instead of getting an IV drip overnight like I should have. I was told that had I waited another few hours, I'd have been on a helicopter flying to a hospital with capacity some 250 miles away. I would have had a $30,000 helicopter bill caused entirely by people who chose not to get vaccinated. Every COVID patient in the hospital at the time was unvaccinated. Is that fair to me? That I get to bear the financial burden of them clogging up our hospitals?
Or my acquaintance who had an ectopic pregnancy, who went to ER in massive pain. They couldn't give her anything but oral pain killers because there were no nurses available to monitor her. She sat in the waiting room for 3 hours crying in the fetal position. Her fallopian tube ruptured, and now she may very well not be able to have children, ever. You can argue with me all you want, but that is 100% because the hospital was over capacity because people chose not to vax.
It is your choice. I will fight against anyone who says that societal responsibility overrules personal choice, because one is the lesser of two evils.. However, I still say that anyone making the personal choice to not vax is a selfish asshole. You are all a part of putting me in a situation where I might have lost my leg or died for lack of care, and my friend may very well be infertile for the rest of her life, because the medical establishment is too busy treating you for an entirely preventable disease.
My state is still in crisis care levels right now. They've called in the National Guard. All because of people refusing to vaccinate.
I'm sure I'm fixing to get lambasted here, but the truth hurts, guys.
ProudHillbilly - Just as soon not share, but since this is probably a relatively safe place, it's the one out west that is under crisis care standards right now that is famous for potatoes. https://healthandwelfare.idaho.gov/news/idaho-expands-crisis-standards-care-statewide-due-surge-covid-19-patients-requiring-0
"Every COVID patient in the hospital at the time was unvaccinated."
Throwing the "bullshit" flag. I work in an ER, in an area with more people than your entire state, and *I* have no fucking idea which patients are vaccinated or not on any given day.
No way in flaming hell you know, or could have found out, the vaxx status of "every COVID patient in the hospital". Unless it's a 4-bed veterinary hospital.
So you're talking out of your ass. There's simply no other way to put that.
Of the ones I've seen in the last few weeks with COVID that I *do* know about, the ratio of vaxxed:unvaxxed is running about 50:50.
So tell us what you know, rather than what you feel, and leave the bullshit out this time.
Your story has all the mauvaise odeur of the COVID sob stories that keep cropping up simultaneously on 47 different FaceCrack accounts on the same day.
And bear well in mind, out of sheer politeness, I won't take you to task at length and in detail for the consequences to society of you dawdling until your leg was full-blown septic to wander in to the ED thinking "This might need to be looked at".
Let's just leave it at you owning your own half of the problem.
>I won't take you to task at length and in detail for the consequences to society of you dawdling until your leg was full-blown septic to wander in to the ED thinking "This might need to be looked at".<
I had a sudden fever start at ten AM. At the time, I was several hours from home out in the woods. I was in the ER by 6 that night. Prior to the fever setting in, my leg felt fine, and so did I. I noticed a red spot starting at sometime around 2pm, about the size of a quarter. I traced it with a magic marker. By 4 pm it had gotten to where it was running from my ankle to half way up my calf. I left for the ER an hour later when my wife got home so she could watch the kids, who were with me. You assume an awful lot. Things happen fast to me because of my condition. This wasn't a case of me ignoring the issue for days.
>I work in an ER, in an area with more people than your entire state, and *I* have no fucking idea which patients are vaccinated or not on any given day.<
I'm going off of what I've been told, I'll grant you that, but that IS what I was told. I don't really have any other way to parse it, really, so you can take me to task on that if you'd like. The data isn't available to me in any other way. I have a relative that works at the hospital who was there that night. I trusted them to treat my leg, so I'm not sure why I'd suddenly distrust them on that statement. (My mother also works at the same hospital and she confirmed what I was told, although again, I will concede that is what SHE is being told, too, so I suppose the doctors there could be lying). I also think that while it's reasonable that someone working in a ER might not know vax status, the folks treating them once they're admitted probably DO know. So I totally believe that YOU don't have visibility on that, working in the ER, but I'd be pretty confident stating that once you admit them, whoever is treating them at that point will pull a medical history on them and damn well know.
I don't really buy into the conspiracy stuff. I don't think that hospitals and the governments world wide are all colluding the "pad" the numbers and hide the fact that vaccines don't work. If they say that the majority are unvaccinated, I really don't understand the motivation to disbelieve that. There would be millions of people in on that conspiracy. That makes it completely untenable.
About halfway down this page is a chart showing new cases and new hospitalizations in New York, from May through July.
I'd like to understand how this doesn't show a pretty drastic reduction in cases with the vax, as well and a likewise drastic reduction in hospitalizations. It certainly doesn't even remotely approach your anecdotal 50/50 estimate.
You accused me of "pulling things out of my ass", so I decided to go get something from the source. I won't do that to you, since I have no reason to disbelieve your anecdotes and I don't want to accuse you of lying - I believe that you are arguing from good faith, which is something that you did not do for me. You literally insinuated that my honest experience was lies, which is pretty insulting to me. However, I would argue that it's pretty clear that reality differs from your experience, which is why the plural of 'anecdote" is never considered "data".
This doesn't mean you're lying, it just means you're wrong. See how I am extending a courtesy there that you didn't extend to me?
Also, quite honestly, I'm not exactly sure what route you were trying to take by accusing me of being irresponsible in taking care of my leg, but I can definitely say that offended the hell out of me. You probably don't care, but in all honesty, you kind of flew off the handle on assuming something that wasn't true. I've struggled mightily with bad health my entire life for reasons that are not of my own making. To struggle the way I have, only to have some anonymous internet warrior insinuate that it's my fault without any basis to make that claim and without any knowledge of the actual story, just feels shitty.
You might try to disagree with someone without being a jerk about it in the future.
Or, maybe you still don't care. Either way, food for thought.
1) I have no doubt you were told things which you received in good faith. It's still anecdotal b.s., not factual information. The reliability is zero. You didn't get data, you got gossip. The only one who knows something, let alone everything, about everyone in a given hospital, is far above the "friend of a relative's cousins's hairdresser" level of water-cooler communications. At anything above a one-horse hospital, nobody knows what "everybody knows".
There are also federal laws regarding disclosure of just about anything to people without any need to know. That would be everybody but the doctors and nurses actually treating any given patient. The fines and penalties are pretty draconian, and when people start throwing out lines like "everybody here for COVID was unvaxxed", the conga line of contingency lawyers who'll take on the class-action suit will look like the Bar Association phonebook, because hospitals have deep pockets.
Relative or no, with that factor in mind, consider both the intelligence and the professionalism of anyone willing to disclose privileged medical information to you (or anyone else) very carefully. The standard of military intelligence applies: "Those who talk, don't know; those who know, don't talk."
2) You don't need any conspiracy theories to explain what's been going on: TPTB have been upfront about it. No deviation from the Official Narrative will be tolerated. No exceptions will be made. The idiots run by my governor, the idiots run by the governor of New York, the idiots run by the White House, and any number of other states, have been told and passed on that exact message. NFY is willing to fill all unvaccinated health care workers, and replace them with barely-qualified foreigners, to underline that narrative. I had a board-certified neurosurgeon (just about the pinnacle of medical training and difficulty, btw) tell us openly that the multiple mRNA jabs were a crock, but when I suggested he push that back up the food chain, he immediately demurred with the rationale "If I said this publicly, I could lose my medical license!"
3) Regarding your leg, outside of jungle tropics, no one goes from "a spot the size of a quarter" to "skin starting to split open" in 8 hours. So somewhere, you're short-stroking the narrative just a bit. If you have an immune condition that bad, you should live next door to the hospital and have an ambulance on speed dial. But it's a free country, and that's your business. So yet again, own your half of the narrative, if you're that prone to massive sepsis that blooms inside a single shift. Given other factors, it sounds like you did everything within your power to seek treatment relatively promptly, other than being so far from it in the first place. You have my sincere and complete apology for any offense I gave you in that respect.
Let's be fair, you didn't go the the source, you went to a source, and one with dubious credibility on the topic at hand, and it's the same one that said, in order "Masks don't work!", "Wait, we lied, yes they do!", and finally "You really should wear two of them!"
Regarding the medical numbers you refer to, riddle me this:
If the vaccines were wholly responsible for the drop-off, several logical questions arise:
1) What caused the drop-offs last year after the previous two spikes, when no vaccines existed?
2) If the vaccines work, why are there subsequent spikes, despite widening swaths of the population "fully vaxxed"?
3) From that MMWR report: "The ratio of hospitalizations to cases was moderately lower among fully vaccinated (13.1 hospitalizations per 100 cases) compared with unvaccinated (19.0 hospitalizations per 100 cases) groups." That's an entirely laughable improvement of one over the other. Fully vaccinated hospitalizations should be closer to zero, not 70% as bad as no vaccination. When we have a year where the flu shot is 70% ineffective, (like happened just a few years ago, when the annual flu shot was barely 15% effective) we call that an epidemiological disaster, not a great year.
4) Under a separate data-set, Israel (pop. 8.8M) is something like 80+% vaccinated (higher rates, in fact, as age increases), yet is experiencing the greatest per capita number of new infections, and the greatest per capita death rates despite this. And 80% of both the infected and COVID newly-dead there are "fully vaccinated people". Explain how less than 20% of the population there currently not vaccinated is driving this bus there, and why more people are dying, if the vaccines are the answer.
While you're working out the answers, beware of the moving goalposts of The Official Narrative, and try not to get run over by them.
The conclusion that has to be drawn, even from the laughably inept CDC, is that 1) The vaccines don't "work" for any value of that word. They are a medical embarrassment, coupled with severe risks that we know of, and god-alone-knows what as-yet unknown problems, which will only be discovered in time, much like Agent Orange or Round-Up or Thalidomide or any other 20 things. a) They do not stop COVID infection, even in "fully" vaccinated persons. b) They do not stop transmission, even from fully vaccinated persons. c) They don't even mittigate severity to any great degree, being only marginally better than nothing, except with non-zero risks from receiving the frankencocktail itself. d) These multiple failures are the entire excuse to resume masking for everyone, and resume social distancing for everyone (except at awards shows, private dinners for TPTB, and birthday parties on Martha's Vineyard). e) Pandemics wax and wane, in all times, and all places, for a multitude of variables, not just vaccination. One could note that dog-walking declined, and then increased, and extrapolate that therefore dogs are the new COVID vector. Except for the axiom that "correlation is not causation". Otherwise blaming the reduction on the lack of elephants climbing the trees in Central Park and no alligators in the pond there are equally viable arguments for the decline.
When TPTB admit their vaccines are pointless, worthless, unsafe, and dangerous, you can rely on their honesty. Until then, the cartoon that headed this post is the final word on the subject, and the illogic underlying the current crapload of bloviation from official sources.
If that hurts your feelings now, imagine how butthurt 160M Americans will be when they figure out how badly they were had by getting the vaxx. Doubly so if that realization dawns due to unforeseen medical complications directly because of getting it.
BTW, while you're up, your search for information begs an obvious question: why pick on NYFS?
Granted, they're the ones in the MMWR, but that's a venture into the vagaries of one of the hands-down stupidest states in this whole crisis, which came in second only to New Jersey in percentage of people killed by COVID, not least of which because of their former governor's homicidal policy of cohorting actively infected frail elderly with uninfected ones in convalescent hospitals, which led to tens of thousands of needless deaths.
Which brings up that the decline in cases and deaths there might have a wee bit more to do with having infected and killed off the most vulnerable people there, and the disease running out of fertile killing fields to depopulate, rather than any benefits of the not-a-vaxxes. (That's the problem with looking at only one variable, in a 20- or 50-variable problem.)
So let's instead turn to your (semi-unnamed) home state, the Land of Potatoes.
The state pop is 1.85M. To date, it's had 249,740 cases of COVID. Which puts your state at about a 14% infection rate. The US national average is roughly only 13%, so that makes your friends and neighbors slightly stupider about spreading COVID than average, but not by very much. And your COVID death rate of only 1.1% is among the best in the nation, well above average, so you've got that going for you.
And 87% of your COVID cases, and 85% of your deaths all happened more than 30 days ago, going back to when this started.
So why are your hospitals full now, with 3 "vaccines" (which you think everyone should get) available, despite the fact that 1,580,299 doses have been administered in Idaho, which translates to between 43% and 85% of the entire state vaccinated (depending on whether they got a one-dose or two-dose vaxx), which wasn't the case for the the last three national spikes, when your hospitals were anything but overwhelmed or even mostly full???
Why has it gotten worse where you are, with something around 2/3rds of your state "fully vaccinated", than what it was like when nobody was vaccinated?
WHAT changed?
Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. What changed was the fact that about 2/3rds of your state got vaxxed.
And now your hospitals are a shitshow, exactly like was the case in Nawlins, Atlanta, NYFC, and around me, when there was no vaccine.
If you can explain that massively counter-intuitive reality, including why you think the unvaxxed are driving the pandemic bus - like they didn't do nearly so badly when everyone was unvaxxed - and explain why anyone as yet unvaxxed should want that sh*t pumped into them, given the fact that the more we inject, the worse things get, with a bonus of extra-curricular death and permanent disability from taking it, you'd be smarter than the entire CDC, NIAID, FDA, Congress, and White House, put together.
But somehow, I doubt you'll be able to pull that trick off.
Aesop - been out of town again so sorry for the late reply. Here's my best attempt to keep it short:
"you went to a source, and one with dubious credibility on the topic at hand, and it's the same one that said, in order "Masks don't work!", "Wait, we lied, yes they do!", and finally "You really should wear two of them!""
God, yes. The PTB have lost all credibility on this, which is why I don't listen to them. I listen to doctors and medical professionals to the best of my ability. Fauci, et al, have lied to us and admitted it. I no longer trust anything they have to say.
"1) What caused the drop-offs last year after the previous two spikes, when no vaccines existed?"
No effing clue. I'm not a virologist.
"2) If the vaccines work, why are there subsequent spikes, despite widening swaths of the population "fully vaxxed"?"
Best I can tell, the spikes are mostly in the unvaccinated (which I know that you disagree with, but I keep seeing data sources corroborating this, and you kind of haven't linked any, so...) and are exacerbated by the Delta Variant, which is supposed to be much more transmissible. One assumes, then, that this most recent spike would have been far worse if not for the vaccinations (worst of all, in fact).
Yeahhhh... Israel. That is starting to make it look like my stance is entirely wrong here, and yours right. I've been watching it closely. I don't really have an explanation for Israel, and it's concerning, for sure.
" ) These multiple failures are the entire excuse to resume masking for everyone, and resume social distancing for everyone (except at awards shows, private dinners for TPTB, and birthday parties on Martha's Vineyard)."
You're getting tired of that, too, huh? I mean, if they wanted us to stop trusting them and start seeking other sources of information, i really can't think of a better way to go about it. Ad the whole "sophisticated crowd" narrative, and it starts to sound an awful lot like "COVID only effects stupid people, we're too smart to get it". Or other, less savory messages.
"Re: Idaho"
Idaho's vax rate is about 41%, so you're pretty close to correct. Again, according to what I've been told (which, granted, is exactly as useful as you suggest, as long as you recognize that your anecdotes are just as useful), the combination of the more transmissible Delta variant and the large percentage of unvaxxed is what is causing Idaho's current issue.
I guess I'm going off of a small set of facts, that I've extrapolated to include this situation, and I'm resting my hope on them:
1.) Vaccines throughout my entire life, and for lifetimes before mine, have proven safe, effective, and are a good idea. Given that information, I've no reason to assume this vax is any different.
2.) The recent surges have been a combination of a more transmissible delta variant, coupled with still large quantities of unvaccinated people. This, unfortunately, is the only one of these sets where I have to trust the proven liars, but I've got no other way to know outside of massively biased anecdotal datasets that are often contradictory, such as the anecdotes you provide, versus those provided by my relatives (and no, Aesop, i think you damn well know that providing anonymous, broad-brush data such as the vaccination rate of people inside the hospital is hardly a violation of HIPAA, which requires the disclosure of protected medical information of a known individual (essentially, anonymous discussions of things that happened at work aren't HIPAA violations). I think you know that and are simply attempting to undermine my anecdotes by impugning the motives/ethics of the people sharing that info with me, when there is no such requirement.
3.) I'm profoundly immune suppressed and will likely have a rough goddamn time of it if I get COVID, so I'm kind of motivated to DO SOMETHING other than hide in my basement. Especially given I'm the breadwinner at my house and can't really just stop working to protect myself. So to me, the vax is great. If it reduces my risk, then it's a win-win. No, I'm not scared, but I'm not exactly in a great hurry to die, either.
4.) The data on the vaccines are inconclusive. You are extremely biased to the "they don't work" side, and have demonstrated that by hand-waving any data away that doesn't support that. I'm very concerned that they don't work as advertised, and the data supporting that is growing. However, there's a shit ton of data showing that they work well, also, so the best we can say is "inconclusive" and leave it at that. In the mean time, the chances of serious side effects are pretty damn low, and long term issues aren't really a thing with vaccines, just drugs, so... I think we're all probably pretty safe just taking them.
13 comments:
Truism there (if you believe what they are saying)...
This is an anti-vax argument as old as time, and it's not a good one.
No vaccine, ever, has provided complete protection against being infected by the virus, later. They do provide a greatly reduced chance of such infection, and they generally make any such infection greatly reduced.
However, the thing that the anti-vaxxers just either can't understand, or they willfully choose to ignore because it undermines their position, is that even if they did provide full immunity, and the vaccinated were 100% safe from the infection, the choice to remain unvaccinated carries societal implications that effect everybody.
For instance, we will never achieve herd immunity, and any chance that the virus can be eliminated is lost. This is a bad argument for COVID, granted, because as a highly infectious respiratory illness, it probably can't be eradicated. But there is no arguing with the data that suggest that the vaxxed aren't filling our hospitals en mass, when the unvaxxed are.
However, there are further implications. The hospital where I live is over capacity right now with COVID patients. I went in a little bit ago with a nasty infection in my leg that had spread from ankle to knee and caused my leg to swell up so badly that my skin was starting to split. Under normal circumstances, I would have been admitted to the hospital for observation, since I am profoundly immuno-suppressed and the docs working on me were very concerned. However, no beds were available, so I got to play "fuck around and find out" with some oral antibiotics at home, instead of getting an IV drip overnight like I should have. I was told that had I waited another few hours, I'd have been on a helicopter flying to a hospital with capacity some 250 miles away. I would have had a $30,000 helicopter bill caused entirely by people who chose not to get vaccinated. Every COVID patient in the hospital at the time was unvaccinated. Is that fair to me? That I get to bear the financial burden of them clogging up our hospitals?
Or my acquaintance who had an ectopic pregnancy, who went to ER in massive pain. They couldn't give her anything but oral pain killers because there were no nurses available to monitor her. She sat in the waiting room for 3 hours crying in the fetal position. Her fallopian tube ruptured, and now she may very well not be able to have children, ever. You can argue with me all you want, but that is 100% because the hospital was over capacity because people chose not to vax.
It is your choice. I will fight against anyone who says that societal responsibility overrules personal choice, because one is the lesser of two evils.. However, I still say that anyone making the personal choice to not vax is a selfish asshole. You are all a part of putting me in a situation where I might have lost my leg or died for lack of care, and my friend may very well be infertile for the rest of her life, because the medical establishment is too busy treating you for an entirely preventable disease.
My state is still in crisis care levels right now. They've called in the National Guard. All because of people refusing to vaccinate.
I'm sure I'm fixing to get lambasted here, but the truth hurts, guys.
Just curious - what state do you live in?
ProudHillbilly - Just as soon not share, but since this is probably a relatively safe place, it's the one out west that is under crisis care standards right now that is famous for potatoes. https://healthandwelfare.idaho.gov/news/idaho-expands-crisis-standards-care-statewide-due-surge-covid-19-patients-requiring-0
"Every COVID patient in the hospital at the time was unvaccinated."
Throwing the "bullshit" flag.
I work in an ER, in an area with more people than your entire state, and *I* have no fucking idea which patients are vaccinated or not on any given day.
No way in flaming hell you know, or could have found out, the vaxx status of "every COVID patient in the hospital". Unless it's a 4-bed veterinary hospital.
So you're talking out of your ass.
There's simply no other way to put that.
Of the ones I've seen in the last few weeks with COVID that I *do* know about, the ratio of vaxxed:unvaxxed is running about 50:50.
So tell us what you know, rather than what you feel, and leave the bullshit out this time.
Your story has all the mauvaise odeur of the COVID sob stories that keep cropping up simultaneously on 47 different FaceCrack accounts on the same day.
50 yard penalty, and loss of possession.
And bear well in mind, out of sheer politeness, I won't take you to task at length and in detail for the consequences to society of you dawdling until your leg was full-blown septic to wander in to the ED thinking "This might need to be looked at".
Let's just leave it at you owning your own half of the problem.
>I won't take you to task at length and in detail for the consequences to society of you dawdling until your leg was full-blown septic to wander in to the ED thinking "This might need to be looked at".<
I had a sudden fever start at ten AM. At the time, I was several hours from home out in the woods. I was in the ER by 6 that night. Prior to the fever setting in, my leg felt fine, and so did I. I noticed a red spot starting at sometime around 2pm, about the size of a quarter. I traced it with a magic marker. By 4 pm it had gotten to where it was running from my ankle to half way up my calf. I left for the ER an hour later when my wife got home so she could watch the kids, who were with me. You assume an awful lot. Things happen fast to me because of my condition. This wasn't a case of me ignoring the issue for days.
>I work in an ER, in an area with more people than your entire state, and *I* have no fucking idea which patients are vaccinated or not on any given day.<
I'm going off of what I've been told, I'll grant you that, but that IS what I was told. I don't really have any other way to parse it, really, so you can take me to task on that if you'd like. The data isn't available to me in any other way. I have a relative that works at the hospital who was there that night. I trusted them to treat my leg, so I'm not sure why I'd suddenly distrust them on that statement. (My mother also works at the same hospital and she confirmed what I was told, although again, I will concede that is what SHE is being told, too, so I suppose the doctors there could be lying). I also think that while it's reasonable that someone working in a ER might not know vax status, the folks treating them once they're admitted probably DO know. So I totally believe that YOU don't have visibility on that, working in the ER, but I'd be pretty confident stating that once you admit them, whoever is treating them at that point will pull a medical history on them and damn well know.
I don't really buy into the conspiracy stuff. I don't think that hospitals and the governments world wide are all colluding the "pad" the numbers and hide the fact that vaccines don't work. If they say that the majority are unvaccinated, I really don't understand the motivation to disbelieve that. There would be millions of people in on that conspiracy. That makes it completely untenable.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e1.htm
About halfway down this page is a chart showing new cases and new hospitalizations in New York, from May through July.
I'd like to understand how this doesn't show a pretty drastic reduction in cases with the vax, as well and a likewise drastic reduction in hospitalizations. It certainly doesn't even remotely approach your anecdotal 50/50 estimate.
You accused me of "pulling things out of my ass", so I decided to go get something from the source. I won't do that to you, since I have no reason to disbelieve your anecdotes and I don't want to accuse you of lying - I believe that you are arguing from good faith, which is something that you did not do for me. You literally insinuated that my honest experience was lies, which is pretty insulting to me. However, I would argue that it's pretty clear that reality differs from your experience, which is why the plural of 'anecdote" is never considered "data".
This doesn't mean you're lying, it just means you're wrong. See how I am extending a courtesy there that you didn't extend to me?
Also, quite honestly, I'm not exactly sure what route you were trying to take by accusing me of being irresponsible in taking care of my leg, but I can definitely say that offended the hell out of me. You probably don't care, but in all honesty, you kind of flew off the handle on assuming something that wasn't true. I've struggled mightily with bad health my entire life for reasons that are not of my own making. To struggle the way I have, only to have some anonymous internet warrior insinuate that it's my fault without any basis to make that claim and without any knowledge of the actual story, just feels shitty.
You might try to disagree with someone without being a jerk about it in the future.
Or, maybe you still don't care. Either way, food for thought.
1) I have no doubt you were told things which you received in good faith.
It's still anecdotal b.s., not factual information. The reliability is zero. You didn't get data, you got gossip.
The only one who knows something, let alone everything, about everyone in a given hospital, is far above the "friend of a relative's cousins's hairdresser" level of water-cooler communications.
At anything above a one-horse hospital, nobody knows what "everybody knows".
There are also federal laws regarding disclosure of just about anything to people without any need to know. That would be everybody but the doctors and nurses actually treating any given patient. The fines and penalties are pretty draconian, and when people start throwing out lines like "everybody here for COVID was unvaxxed", the conga line of contingency lawyers who'll take on the class-action suit will look like the Bar Association phonebook, because hospitals have deep pockets.
Relative or no, with that factor in mind, consider both the intelligence and the professionalism of anyone willing to disclose privileged medical information to you (or anyone else) very carefully.
The standard of military intelligence applies:
"Those who talk, don't know; those who know, don't talk."
2) You don't need any conspiracy theories to explain what's been going on: TPTB have been upfront about it. No deviation from the Official Narrative will be tolerated. No exceptions will be made. The idiots run by my governor, the idiots run by the governor of New York, the idiots run by the White House, and any number of other states, have been told and passed on that exact message. NFY is willing to fill all unvaccinated health care workers, and replace them with barely-qualified foreigners, to underline that narrative. I had a board-certified neurosurgeon (just about the pinnacle of medical training and difficulty, btw) tell us openly that the multiple mRNA jabs were a crock, but when I suggested he push that back up the food chain, he immediately demurred with the rationale "If I said this publicly, I could lose my medical license!"
3) Regarding your leg, outside of jungle tropics, no one goes from "a spot the size of a quarter" to "skin starting to split open" in 8 hours. So somewhere, you're short-stroking the narrative just a bit. If you have an immune condition that bad, you should live next door to the hospital and have an ambulance on speed dial. But it's a free country, and that's your business. So yet again, own your half of the narrative, if you're that prone to massive sepsis that blooms inside a single shift. Given other factors, it sounds like you did everything within your power to seek treatment relatively promptly, other than being so far from it in the first place. You have my sincere and complete apology for any offense I gave you in that respect.
Let's be fair, you didn't go the the source, you went to a source, and one with dubious credibility on the topic at hand, and it's the same one that said, in order "Masks don't work!", "Wait, we lied, yes they do!", and finally "You really should wear two of them!"
Regarding the medical numbers you refer to, riddle me this:
If the vaccines were wholly responsible for the drop-off, several logical questions arise:
1) What caused the drop-offs last year after the previous two spikes, when no vaccines existed?
2) If the vaccines work, why are there subsequent spikes, despite widening swaths of the population "fully vaxxed"?
3) From that MMWR report:
"The ratio of hospitalizations to cases was moderately lower among fully vaccinated (13.1 hospitalizations per 100 cases) compared with unvaccinated (19.0 hospitalizations per 100 cases) groups."
That's an entirely laughable improvement of one over the other. Fully vaccinated hospitalizations should be closer to zero, not 70% as bad as no vaccination.
When we have a year where the flu shot is 70% ineffective, (like happened just a few years ago, when the annual flu shot was barely 15% effective) we call that an epidemiological disaster, not a great year.
4) Under a separate data-set, Israel (pop. 8.8M) is something like 80+% vaccinated (higher rates, in fact, as age increases), yet is experiencing the greatest per capita number of new infections, and the greatest per capita death rates despite this. And 80% of both the infected and COVID newly-dead there are "fully vaccinated people". Explain how less than 20% of the population there currently not vaccinated is driving this bus there, and why more people are dying, if the vaccines are the answer.
While you're working out the answers, beware of the moving goalposts of The Official Narrative, and try not to get run over by them.
The conclusion that has to be drawn, even from the laughably inept CDC, is that
1) The vaccines don't "work" for any value of that word. They are a medical embarrassment, coupled with severe risks that we know of, and god-alone-knows what as-yet unknown problems, which will only be discovered in time, much like Agent Orange or Round-Up or Thalidomide or any other 20 things.
a) They do not stop COVID infection, even in "fully" vaccinated persons.
b) They do not stop transmission, even from fully vaccinated persons.
c) They don't even mittigate severity to any great degree, being only marginally better than nothing, except with non-zero risks from receiving the frankencocktail itself.
d) These multiple failures are the entire excuse to resume masking for everyone, and resume social distancing for everyone (except at awards shows, private dinners for TPTB, and birthday parties on Martha's Vineyard).
e) Pandemics wax and wane, in all times, and all places, for a multitude of variables, not just vaccination.
One could note that dog-walking declined, and then increased, and extrapolate that therefore dogs are the new COVID vector. Except for the axiom that "correlation is not causation". Otherwise blaming the reduction on the lack of elephants climbing the trees in Central Park and no alligators in the pond there are equally viable arguments for the decline.
When TPTB admit their vaccines are pointless, worthless, unsafe, and dangerous, you can rely on their honesty.
Until then, the cartoon that headed this post is the final word on the subject, and the illogic underlying the current crapload of bloviation from official sources.
If that hurts your feelings now, imagine how butthurt 160M Americans will be when they figure out how badly they were had by getting the vaxx.
Doubly so if that realization dawns due to unforeseen medical complications directly because of getting it.
BTW, while you're up, your search for information begs an obvious question: why pick on NYFS?
Granted, they're the ones in the MMWR, but that's a venture into the vagaries of one of the hands-down stupidest states in this whole crisis, which came in second only to New Jersey in percentage of people killed by COVID, not least of which because of their former governor's homicidal policy of cohorting actively infected frail elderly with uninfected ones in convalescent hospitals, which led to tens of thousands of needless deaths.
Which brings up that the decline in cases and deaths there might have a wee bit more to do with having infected and killed off the most vulnerable people there, and the disease running out of fertile killing fields to depopulate, rather than any benefits of the not-a-vaxxes.
(That's the problem with looking at only one variable, in a 20- or 50-variable problem.)
So let's instead turn to your (semi-unnamed) home state, the Land of Potatoes.
The state pop is 1.85M.
To date, it's had 249,740 cases of COVID.
Which puts your state at about a 14% infection rate.
The US national average is roughly only 13%, so that makes your friends and neighbors slightly stupider about spreading COVID than average, but not by very much.
And your COVID death rate of only 1.1% is among the best in the nation, well above average, so you've got that going for you.
And 87% of your COVID cases, and 85% of your deaths all happened more than 30 days ago, going back to when this started.
So why are your hospitals full now, with 3 "vaccines" (which you think everyone should get) available, despite the fact that 1,580,299 doses have been administered in Idaho, which translates to between 43% and 85% of the entire state vaccinated (depending on whether they got a one-dose or two-dose vaxx), which wasn't the case for the the last three national spikes, when your hospitals were anything but overwhelmed or even mostly full???
Why has it gotten worse where you are, with something around 2/3rds of your state "fully vaccinated", than what it was like when nobody was vaccinated?
WHAT changed?
Oh, yeah. I almost forgot.
What changed was the fact that about 2/3rds of your state got vaxxed.
And now your hospitals are a shitshow, exactly like was the case in Nawlins, Atlanta, NYFC, and around me, when there was no vaccine.
If you can explain that massively counter-intuitive reality, including why you think the unvaxxed are driving the pandemic bus - like they didn't do nearly so badly when everyone was unvaxxed - and explain why anyone as yet unvaxxed should want that sh*t pumped into them, given the fact that the more we inject, the worse things get, with a bonus of extra-curricular death and permanent disability from taking it, you'd be smarter than the entire CDC, NIAID, FDA, Congress, and White House, put together.
But somehow, I doubt you'll be able to pull that trick off.
Cue the >crickets< sound effect.
QED
Aesop - been out of town again so sorry for the late reply. Here's my best attempt to keep it short:
"you went to a source, and one with dubious credibility on the topic at hand, and it's the same one that said, in order "Masks don't work!", "Wait, we lied, yes they do!", and finally "You really should wear two of them!""
God, yes. The PTB have lost all credibility on this, which is why I don't listen to them. I listen to doctors and medical professionals to the best of my ability. Fauci, et al, have lied to us and admitted it. I no longer trust anything they have to say.
"1) What caused the drop-offs last year after the previous two spikes, when no vaccines existed?"
No effing clue. I'm not a virologist.
"2) If the vaccines work, why are there subsequent spikes, despite widening swaths of the population "fully vaxxed"?"
Best I can tell, the spikes are mostly in the unvaccinated (which I know that you disagree with, but I keep seeing data sources corroborating this, and you kind of haven't linked any, so...) and are exacerbated by the Delta Variant, which is supposed to be much more transmissible. One assumes, then, that this most recent spike would have been far worse if not for the vaccinations (worst of all, in fact).
"Israel"
Yeahhhh... Israel. That is starting to make it look like my stance is entirely wrong here, and yours right. I've been watching it closely. I don't really have an explanation for Israel, and it's concerning, for sure.
" ) These multiple failures are the entire excuse to resume masking for everyone, and resume social distancing for everyone (except at awards shows, private dinners for TPTB, and birthday parties on Martha's Vineyard)."
You're getting tired of that, too, huh? I mean, if they wanted us to stop trusting them and start seeking other sources of information, i really can't think of a better way to go about it. Ad the whole "sophisticated crowd" narrative, and it starts to sound an awful lot like "COVID only effects stupid people, we're too smart to get it". Or other, less savory messages.
"Re: Idaho"
Idaho's vax rate is about 41%, so you're pretty close to correct. Again, according to what I've been told (which, granted, is exactly as useful as you suggest, as long as you recognize that your anecdotes are just as useful), the combination of the more transmissible Delta variant and the large percentage of unvaxxed is what is causing Idaho's current issue.
I guess I'm going off of a small set of facts, that I've extrapolated to include this situation, and I'm resting my hope on them:
1.) Vaccines throughout my entire life, and for lifetimes before mine, have proven safe, effective, and are a good idea. Given that information, I've no reason to assume this vax is any different.
2.) The recent surges have been a combination of a more transmissible delta variant, coupled with still large quantities of unvaccinated people. This, unfortunately, is the only one of these sets where I have to trust the proven liars, but I've got no other way to know outside of massively biased anecdotal datasets that are often contradictory, such as the anecdotes you provide, versus those provided by my relatives (and no, Aesop, i think you damn well know that providing anonymous, broad-brush data such as the vaccination rate of people inside the hospital is hardly a violation of HIPAA, which requires the disclosure of protected medical information of a known individual (essentially, anonymous discussions of things that happened at work aren't HIPAA violations). I think you know that and are simply attempting to undermine my anecdotes by impugning the motives/ethics of the people sharing that info with me, when there is no such requirement.
3.) I'm profoundly immune suppressed and will likely have a rough goddamn time of it if I get COVID, so I'm kind of motivated to DO SOMETHING other than hide in my basement. Especially given I'm the breadwinner at my house and can't really just stop working to protect myself. So to me, the vax is great. If it reduces my risk, then it's a win-win. No, I'm not scared, but I'm not exactly in a great hurry to die, either.
4.) The data on the vaccines are inconclusive. You are extremely biased to the "they don't work" side, and have demonstrated that by hand-waving any data away that doesn't support that. I'm very concerned that they don't work as advertised, and the data supporting that is growing. However, there's a shit ton of data showing that they work well, also, so the best we can say is "inconclusive" and leave it at that. In the mean time, the chances of serious side effects are pretty damn low, and long term issues aren't really a thing with vaccines, just drugs, so... I think we're all probably pretty safe just taking them.
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