2019–20 Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) Thread

[barbara]

3 hours ago, hananistellata said:

Thank you for reminding me to update! I also had my second shot and became officially fully vaccinated last Saturday. I got a fever as a side effect but it was on the day of the 24 Hour TV program so I felt much better after seeing Yuzuru skate. 

 

I'm glad your family is getting vaccinated! I've noticed that vaccination stats have been raising rapidly on a worldwide level and I'm glad to see that people are cooperating. Cheers to a better future!

The second shot does seem to have some side effects but it's good to remember that you're not sick.  It's just your antibodies going nuts.

And the US has way too many people who are not cooperating.  In fact, the opposite.  It's insane that this, a true public health issue, is only a political football to some.  It makes me SO angry.  If it was only the never-vaxers, never-maskers who were getting sick, I'd feel only a little better.  The hospitals would still be overwhelmed and vaccinated people requiring emergency care would still be be unable to get it.  But those people are also allowing the virus to mutate and also infect children who are too young to be vaccinated.

 

Glad you are protected!!!!

[rockstaryuzu]

6 hours ago, hananistellata said:

yet a lot of people are butthurt about it

And how! This weekend Canada's share of those same people erupted in protest...outside hospitals...and distinguished themselves by upsetting, harssing , and blocking patients on their way in to appointments, as well ambulances on their way in to emergency depts. 

 

 

I get that people aren't happy with the civil rights implications of vaccine passports, but bloody write a letter to your MP already, don't go bothering the sick and the aged who have nothing to do with it.  

[Sombreuil]

Junior doctor child is on a rotation in the respiratory department- so the Covid ward. The vast majority of the patients on Cpap are under 30 and unvaccinated.  Same goes for ICU.  Health workers are fed up with working long hours and then facing aggro from the general public and friends and relatives who are anti vaxxers.  A few weeks ago a young mother in NI died of Covid leaving small children and a new baby - her widower was interviewed urging people to see sense.  I don’t long for the days when the doctors word was undisputed- every expert needs to be scrutinised and questioned- but the figures speak for themselves.  I also don’t want a Chinese style clampdown on social media - but some regulation of fake news and bogus information is desperately needed.

[Neenah]

The problem is it doesn't matter how many facts you present them or how many times you refute their conspiracy theories with scientific evidence. To some people a 30 second Tiktock video taken out of context of someone they don't even have a name of is more than enough to prove they are right.

I've been having a long "discussion" (if it can be called that) with a college professor (who has a PhD) about this for months. Every time he would bring a weird unsubstantiated claim about the vaccine to our group of 5000 academics and gets so many likes. When I ask for his sources, I get a "Google it" or "everyone know this is the truth". My own answers that fact check his claims and refute them with scientific and a official sources are almost always ignored and only few days later, I find him or someone else in the group posting the same thing again. 

The whole this is so frustrating. I am talking to people who are supposed to be top of society in education and awareness, yet they act like that. I stopped bothering a month ago to preserve may sanity. 

[rockstaryuzu]

14 hours ago, Sombreuil said:

Junior doctor child is on a rotation in the respiratory department- so the Covid ward. The vast majority of the patients on Cpap are under 30 and unvaccinated.  Same goes for ICU.  Health workers are fed up with working long hours and then facing aggro from the general public and friends and relatives who are anti vaxxers.  A few weeks ago a young mother in NI died of Covid leaving small children and a new baby - her widower was interviewed urging people to see sense.  I don’t long for the days when the doctors word was undisputed- every expert needs to be scrutinised and questioned- but the figures speak for themselves.  I also don’t want a Chinese style clampdown on social media - but some regulation of fake news and bogus information is desperately needed.

Seconded. People have every right to be as dumb as they wish, but do it on their own time. 

 

It doesn't even have to be people outside the hospital. Last Thursday night, one of our hospital housekeeping staff got into an argument with me over the hospital making the vaccine mandatory for staff. Turns out, the guy had an ( extremely mild) case of COVID in the first wave. So instead of being grateful that he got off so lightly,  he now is anti-vax, thinks COVID has been blown out of proportion,  and is telling everyone how bad the side effects of Moderna are for women and that's why he won't get it. He's a middle-aged male,  I honestly don't get why he's concerned about the vaccine potentially disrupti g his menstrual cycle, but there you go. He was mad about the mandatory vaccine decree, so I told him it was better than having a swab stuck up your nose every 48 hours ( which is what the testing frequency will be for our conscientious objectors) to tickle your brain.  Far worse than getting a couple needles and having down with it. 

 

Then he tells me, with a wink and a nod, "Ah, but the hospital let's you do the swab yourself, so I won't put it that far in"

 

 

 

 

I should add, housekeeping are the ones with at the highest risk of catching every. single. thing. that comes into the hospital. If anyone should be gung-ho on vaccination,  it's them. 

 

 

[barbara]

28 minutes ago, rockstaryuzu said:

Seconded. People have every right to be as dumb as they wish, but do it on their own time. 

 

It doesn't even have to be people outside the hospital. Last Thursday night, one of our hospital housekeeping staff got into an argument with me over the hospital making the vaccine mandatory for staff. Turns out, the guy had an ( extremely mild) case of COVID in the first wave. So instead of being grateful that he got off so lightly,  he now is anti-vax, thinks COVID has been blown out of proportion,  and is telling everyone how bad the side effects of Moderna are for women and that's why he won't get it. He's a middle-aged male,  I honestly don't get why he's concerned about the vaccine potentially disrupti g his menstrual cycle, but there you go. He was mad about the mandatory vaccine decree, so I told him it was better than having a swab stuck up your nose every 48 hours ( which is what the testing frequency will be for our conscientious objectors) to tickle your brain.  Far worse than getting a couple needles and having down with it. 

 

Then he tells me, with a wink and a nod, "Ah, but the hospital let's you do the swab yourself, so I won't put it that far in"

 

 

 

 

I should add, housekeeping are the ones with at the highest risk of catching every. single. thing. that comes into the hospital. If anyone should be gung-ho on vaccination,  it's them. 

 

 

I say "turn him in". People can push "freedom" all they want but we all have a responsibility for public health.  Good lord, especially for people working in a HEALTH facility.

[rockstaryuzu]

23 minutes ago, barbara said:

I say "turn him in". People can push "freedom" all they want but we all have a responsibility for public health.  Good lord, especially for people working in a HEALTH facility.

I won't have to. The hospital is going to be on the objectors like sticky on glue. In a very kind and HR- appropriate way of course, but still. He won't be getting shifts if he doesn't comply.

[rockstaryuzu]

2 minutes ago, hananistellata said:

I really don't understand what the thought process is.

"How should I complain about the measures of a pandemic that is ruining the health of people and taking thousands of lives daily? Hmmmm... Oh! I know! Harass hospitals full of sick people and employes who are just trying to do their job!" 

How much of an *ss does one need to be to think like that... 

I know, right. 

 

Even if they think they have a constitutionally valid point,  the legislature is where they should be protesting, not hospitals. It's a huge security risk for a soft target like healthcare

[barbara]

People do have the constitutional right to complain and to voice their opinion, no matter how abhorrent, but, in spite of what many of these idiots are saying, they do not have the right to endanger the health of others.  There are exceptions to every amendment.  Free speech does not mean you can cry "fire" in a crowded theatre.

Vaccines have been mandated in this country for at least 6 or 7 decades - to protect the public health, not just the person getting vaccinated.  This is, eventually, going to be added to the list of vaccines mandated.  There will obviously be a lot of bitching and moaning about it, but it is inevitable.  The sooner the better.

[river]

We've instituted a vaccine mandate at my hospital. It is mind-blowing to me that we still have a significant proportion of unvaccinated employees, including nurses. And they are trying to claim that vaccination should be a personal choice. The Pfizer vaccine is fully FDA approved now, so this is no different than MMR, varicella, hepatitis, etc... which are all required to work in health care, and rightfully so.

 

@rockstaryuzu Seriously, he was worried about the vaccine's effect on women's reproductive health? Shame we don't have anyone around here who is an actual expert on the topic.

 

(Anecdotally we've seen some transient cycle changes likely due to the physiologic stress of mounting an immune response. Things should reset within a few months. And don't get me started on the completely debunked and yet something I hear about at least once a week in my clinic rumor that antibodies from COVID vaccination target the placenta. Think about it, people. If spike protein antibodies targeted the placenta, which they do not, you'd develop them whether they came from vaccination or from infection. It's not even like you'd be protecting yourself by not getting vaccinated.)

[barbara]

Hospitals in Tucson are doing the same (mandating) and meeting resistance, surprisingly (to me) including nurses and physicians. They have one nurse tasked with getting all the laundry and cleaning staff vaccinated (mostly non-English speakers who were merely uninformed as opposed to misinformed). There was a big rally in front of one of the major hospitals that blocked the ER entrance.  Forced to move off hospital property, they took over the nearby major intersection- so ambulances still couldn't get through.  I find it so hard to believe these people have working brains.  And I have zero sympathy for anyone who chooses no vax over getting one and keeping their job.  This should be a given in a health care facility (and schools and transportation, etc.)

 

[rockstaryuzu]

2 hours ago, river said:

 

@rockstaryuzu Seriously, he was worried about the vaccine's effect on women's reproductive health? Shame we don't have anyone around here who is an actual expert on the topic.

 

 

To be honest, I was too busy being mind-boggled by the mansplaining experience to think, " Hey, wait, I know an ob-gyn who can debunk this one", but yeah.

 

The only semi-valid argument the guy had was the fact that he thought he had natural immunity after having contracted and recovered from COVID, and that one, the hospital can handle with a blood serology test to see where his antibodies are at. I had to do it myself, twice, to prove I had received MMR . It's a routine thing for the hospital to request of employees. 

[cereus]

My private school held a voluntary vaccine clinic on its private property and there were anti-vaxxers protesting outside and harassing the participating students, who are almost all minors. I don't agree with the argument that getting vaccinated is a personal choice, but if one does think that way, how does it make any sense to interfere with someone else's personal choice to get vaccinated?

[barbara]

They think it's "their personal choice" to force everyone else to make that same choice.  In Tucson, a man (who didn't even have a student at this school) was arrested, with zip ties, trying to make a citizen's arrest of a school's principal because of a mask mandate.  He was accompanied by the student (who didn't want to wear a mask) and her parent. Why was it even his business?  (FYI: in Arizona, the R-governor has stated that mask mandates are not legal, yet all but 3 school districts in my part of the state have mask mandates anyway.)

[rockstaryuzu]

1 hour ago, cereus said:

how does it make any sense to interfere with someone else's personal choice to get vaccinated?

Well, because respecting personal choice is a one-way street for most anti-vaxxers. Their personal freedom is sacrosanct but anyone else's can be trampled at will. 🙄

 

 

Of course, there are those who are simply cautious and afraid.