Covid-19 miscellany

[untermensche]

So the man who stops his child from walking into traffic is a dictator?

False analogy is false.

Quite a reasoned comeback.

We take these little children and make getting the vaccine in their interest because they are too stupid to do it for themselves.

We protect society from these deluded children at the same time.

The idea that sound measures to try to fight a deadly pandemic are a problem is an insanity I never thought I would see.

But we are in the age of Trump and a fraction of the population has lost their mind.

 

[jab]

Sure. The metric and breakoff point we chose is somewhat arbitrary. The degree of force used has to be in proportion to the danger to the risk posed. At some point we go from protecting the public to being fascist idiots. In Europe I think we're crossing that boundary now.

Mask requirement is such a low bar on force scale that I thought those whining about having to use masks were always pathetic. Even now I'd support masking if the government recommended it. But when it comes to injecting things into our bodies the requirement for justification goes up steeply. That limit goes somewhere around corpses lying in the street. Bodily autonomy is sacred in liberal democracies. I think it's good to keep it sacred.



Yes. I think so. These people looked at the available data and reached a different conclusion than you (or I). That's got to be allowed in a democracy. I think we both can agree on that they're idiots. But they're probably able to hold onto a job, and might even be able to raise a family. Which is all I demand to give somebody a free pass on the sanity scale.

Respecting the views of 20% of the population isn't to coddle them. These are sane reasonably well adjusted normal people who have reached another conclusion than you.

Cite?

I've seen a bunch of different numbers. I assume they're different because they ask different questions. About 30% are cautious about vaccines and won't take them unless there's a life threatening reason to do so. So calling them all anti-vaxxers is a bit flippant. These people have trust issues about the government. And that's probably a healthy dose of skepticism to have in any society. Me personally, I have high trust in the medical community and the CDC. But that's me. I'm not going to force those who don't agree with me to comply. I think that's fascism.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/10/biden-covid-vaccine-anti-vaxxers-us.html

you seem to consider yourself an expert judge of people's sanity and insanity--earlier you posted about the supposed insanity of someone on this forum who disagreed with you--also calling them a facist, while the racist delusion birthers, like Trump, are sane and well-adjusted--and though dumb, apparently not fascist.

 

[ZiprHead]

alabama man dies of cardiac event after 43 hospitals with full ICUs turned him away

The family of a man who died of heart issues in Mississippi is asking people to get vaccinated for COVID-19 after 43 hospitals across three states were unable to accept him because of full cardiac ICUs.

Ray Martin DeMonia died last week in Meridian, Mississippi. He was three days shy of his 74th birthday and a well-known native in Cullman, Alabama, his family said.

DeMonia suffered from a cardiac event, and emergency staff at Cullman Regional Medical Center had to bring him to the nearest available bed, which was nearly 200 miles away at a Mississippi hospital.

 

[ZiprHead]

Veteran dies of treatable illness as COVID fills hospital beds, leaving doctors "playing musical chairs"
...

When U.S. Army veteran Daniel Wilkinson started feeling sick last week, he went to the hospital in Bellville, Texas, outside Houston. His health problem wasn't related to COVID-19, but Wilkinson needed advanced care, and with the coronavirus filling up intensive care beds, he couldn't get it in time to save his life.

"He loved his country," his mother, Michelle Puget, told "CBS This Morning" lead national correspondent David Begnaud. "He served two deployments in Afghanistan, came home with a Purple Heart, and it was a gallstone that took him out."

Last Saturday, Wilkinson's mother rushed him to Bellville Medical Center, just three doors down from their home.

Belville emergency room physician Dr. Hasan Kakli treated Wilkinson, and discovered that he had gallstone pancreatitis, something the Belville hospital wasn't equipped to treat.

"I do labs on him, I get labs, and the labs come back, and I'm at the computer, and I have one of those 'Oh, crap' moments. If that stone doesn't spontaneously come out and doesn't resolve itself, that fluid just builds up, backs up into the liver, backs up into the pancreas, and starts to shut down those organs. His bloodwork even showed that his kidneys were shutting down."

Kakli told Begnaud that his patient was dying right in front of him. Wilkinson needed a higher level of care, but with hospitals across Texas and much of the South overwhelmed with COVID patients, there was no place for him.

 

[jab]

Anti-vax Facebook users are begging for prayers after catching COVID
The posts reveal the devastating effects of medical misinformation.

one of the posts talks about the vaccines being made from aborted fetus DNA--where did this come from?--also saw a rabid antivaxxer claiming this on a YouTube video.

 

[Trausti]

We need OSHA to mandate no donuts in the company kitchen; weekly weigh-ins; $14k fines for employees with high BMI.

Patience Grasshopper, that time will come.

You can already detect the busybodies getting that out there in the form of dictating the largest cup a soda can be served in (remember that actually happened) and banning soda vending machines in schools and colleges. The less than subtle attacks on red meat and agriculture in general in the name of “climate apocalypse”. Slowly but surely they walk us (well not all of us) down that path, holding their hand like a trusting child holds the hand of their abductor.

Cry Halfwit, And Let Slip The Dogs Of Woo!

If Rocket Man can do it, so can you.

 

[ZiprHead]

I thought he was a great guy according to Trump/

 

[jab]

They are not overwhelming the hospitals. Did you forget that point? It's central to the entire issue. Maybe pay attention better.

Nonsense. Those hospitalized overwhelmingly have co-morbidities, like obesity. If people actually cared about public health it would be the focus of discussion/prevention. But such talk is verboten.

Yes, I noticed that a lot of the hospitalized anti-vaxxers were fat, which makes their resistance to getting vaccinated all the more puzzling. So yeah, the fat mature unvaccinated should be put at the end of the line for ICU care. Of course some co-morbidities, like type 1 diabetes or many forms of cancer are not at all the responsibility of the individual.

 

[jab]

Nobody knows. Including you. But probably not, given the absence of anyone who is qualified to have an opinion saying that it does.

No, you're not. You're one of the people who is way outside his knowledge and expertise, JAQing off and spreading FUD under the protection that JAQing provides.

You should stop doing that, whether it's accidental or deliberate.

Well, lets throw Manhattan project level resources at nasal vaccines and maybe throw some of the other three viral proteins into intramuscular and nasal vaccines going forward.

You are not qualified to make that recommendation.

Here is another article from Scientific American

To Beat COVID, We May Need a Good Shot in the Nose

Intranasal vaccines might stop the spread of the coronavirus more effectively than needles in arms

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-beat-covid-we-may-need-a-good-shot-in-the-nose/#sa_body

Maybe they will. I am sure that those qualified to investigate that possibility will do so without the advice of random Internet ignoramuses like us.

Huh, can't we even encourage them?

 

[jab]

Yes. For example. China shutting down Wuhan last January was extreme and draconian. Also totally justified IMHO. At that point, for all we knew, humanity was on the brink of going extinct. But even milder things, there's a cost benefit analysis. The Danish authorities demanding people to wear masks on subways and in shops until July this year. I was totally behind that. The minor inconvenience vs the large impact on disease containment is justified.

There's also no hard and fast rule. It's a question of individual judgement where the cut off goes. We all get to decide that.

But I think it looks like we've entered a paradigm where any Covid-19 deaths seem to justify any level of force to get people to vaccinated. And that's where I feel the need to put my foot down

So, what death rate is acceptable to you?

Should we eliminate mandatory seatbelts in cars? Make it an option people have to pay for?

I mean, there are a lot of things that kill less people/year than Covid has that are currently illegal or otherwise mitigated pretty heavily with your "draconian" laws, so let's start a list, shall we? (just off the top of my head)
- drunk driving
- second hand cigarette smoke
- speeding and all other traffic violations
- guns (in the US, maybe the rest of the world should just allow carte blanche gun ownership too)
- flying (let's just eliminate safety regulations, eh?)
- dumping chemicals into the drinking water, rivers, etc.

Which of these should start de-regulating, first?

If we legalise gay marriage we will have to legalise pedophilia. Is that what you want?! Please, think of the children!

Now with mass vaccination death rates are back to normal. Since death rates are back to normal, what are we even discussing? .

The only places that are still suffering are places with low, rates of vaccinated. If its because of a lack of access, then let's work on that. If its because of choice, then we need to respect those people and back off. Americans have had earlier and easier access to vaccine than any other population. There's no reason for Americans not to be vaccinated other than choice. You can't save people who don't want to be saved.

WE need to back off--er, you're not an American--your advice, if not rhetorically spun, would be, "The rest of you pro-vax Americans need to back off."

 

[jab]

[removed]
What was my proposal? You keep using lazy hyperbole to describe something that doesn’t exist.

[removed] You want to force and/or bully people to get vaccinated. As if you know better than them what is good for them. Maybe you do? Maybe you don't? Either way it's their decision.

It's what's good for vulnerable people exposed to the unvaxxed--who are more likely to carry infection than the vaxxed. If it was only themselves they were putting in harm's way of harming, I'd say--let them go for it.

 

[jab]

So, you'd let Target form their own police force?

But this still does not deal with someone like Mike Lindell creating an enclave for the anti-vaxxed to work, shop, etc.

Somewhere for plague rats to shop? That's fucking disgusting. I wonder if this is a speciation event, sometimes. "Divergence and Extinction of Homo Plaguis": a title from a biology book in the far future.

But wouldn't it be convenient to know where the plague rats are going so you can avoid them?
Tom

good point

 

[jab]

But but but: I thought you were AGAINST government mandates??

Sincerely, I'm confused. You seem pro-vaccination (huge agree) but anti mandate (huge disagree) because (and here, I may be going sideways) the government isn't enforcing the mandate????

Because you're mistaking "private rules" for "government mandates".

I'm no more interested in giving the government the right to choose for me than you are giving the government the right to decide which abortions are allowed.

But if a private entity, like a store or a theater, but up a sign requiring something I'd like the government to back them up. Or, say a hospital requires vaccination for continued employment. Make sure employees who'd quit rather than vaccinate understand that they are quitting, not getting fired. No unemployment benefits. That sort of thing.
Tom

Is this your position? Leave it to the marketplace, with the gov't to allow and enforce businesses' mask and vaccination mandates, and no inclusion of mask or vaccination status as forbidden grounds of discrimination. If so, that is at least clear, and better than what exists now in some major North American jurisdictions. Your plan, it seems, also depends on governments and the courts consistently doing the right thing. As a gay man myself, that's something I'm sceptical of.

 

[jab]

Is that ethical? I’m down with it, but is it medically ethical?

Like a liver transplant patient that refuses to quit drinking? They're not going to get that new liver.

yep, or who's in his 60s and a teetotaller--as happened to an Uncle of mine.
Also smokers and lung transplants. during the first surge in 2020 some hospitals in the US and Canada were rationing intubation on teh basis of who they thought was most likely to survive if they got it.

 

[jab]

Is that ethical? I’m down with it, but is it medically ethical?

What do you mean by ethical, in this post?
Tom

Medically ethical to choose one patient over the other.

Yep, because there's not an unlimited supply of livers.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Ya know, if people lost weight, exercised, cut the carbs, and went out in the Sun that’d really be helpful. Nah, better mask forever, stay home, and get fat.

fallacy of false alternatives--these things are not mutually exclusive.
Also, you left out voluntarily inhaling smoke as a risk factor over which a person has some control.

Covid-19 death rates 10 times higher in countries where most adults are overweight, report finds

We need OSHA to mandate no donuts in the company kitchen; weekly weigh-ins; $14k fines for employees with high BMI.

How much of this is actually obesity vs demographics? The fat countries are also older countries.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Man drives into workers at COVID vaccination clinic during brazen attack in California

Colorado Officials Shut Down Vaccine Clinics After Staff Face Harassment

So now the people that abhor cancel culture are trying to cancel people's ability to get the vaccine.

Yeah. The left "cancels" with words. The right cancels with terrorism.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Dictators do that to serve themselves.

Protecting idiots from harming themselves and society is not what dictators do.

To think the government has no right to protect the public from the deluded and dangerous is infantile stupidity.

That dictator he outlawed murder and rape.

The FASCIST!

So, slight quibble here, you can be a dictator and still not be an asshole. The issue is that is the exception rather than the rule, and the bad dictators use good dictators as justification for their own bad dictation.

Where are there any good dictators? Good guys normally lose out to bad guys in becoming dictator.

 

[Jarhyn]

There was a convention downtown that my husband and I went to.

When we got to registration, they asked for vaccine cards. No problem. My husband and everyone else whips them out.

It is literally the first time since he got vaccinated that he needed to look at the cards; he got two because like many, he was a dumbass and forgot his the second time (so did I).

Neither card had his name because the people processing the vaccinations were USAF and none too bright about it. I blame them but only a little.


A lead official in charge of Covid response chased us out and yelled at us like we were anti-vaxxers. She said people like us were the reason that she had to fiends who were dead. Of course, there is a MN system that tracks and retrieves vaccination by name and DOB. It's not available. To anyone.

So of course, counterfeit cards are effective. Non-counterfeit cards may be suspect.

I can stand behind the complications of such a shitty trust-based system being awful.

Even so, we accepted the ban from the convention for the year, even as the unmasked pandemic response Karen yelled at us repeatedly and treated us like antivaxxers. The con chair was there too, and he was at least willing to listen. The other person only gave up screaming after my husband walked off and I made it clear their rant had been heard and I was done listening further.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In Louisiana, nearly 3500 children have been diagnosed with COVID19 in a 4 day span.

“Diagnosed”, lol. Tested positive maybe.

Few children will be in a situation where a test is required. Thus those are tests done because of symptoms.