I’m an ICU Doctor and I Can't Believe What Unvaccinated Patients Are Saying

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/icu-doctor-health-care-workers-unvaccinated-patients_n_6102ad2ae4b000b997df1f17

by mcguire • 5 years ago

67 128 5 years ago

RyJones3• 5 years ago

I can. I got my shots as soon as I could, but I know lots of people that will never do it. Yesterday I was eating at a ramen shop - traffic was slow, so I got to listen to the bulletproof young man waiting tables talk to his friend at length about how he'd never get the shot, just like the flu, I'm not an anti-vaxxer - but, I don't wear tinfoil hats - but.

The list of reasons not to do it was long and apparently convincing enough to them.

bserge3• 5 years ago

A relative of mine is buying into the vaccine conspiracies along with shitting on depression and other mental problems, and honestly, I wish they'd get a serious case of Covid or something.

These people don't learn until someone they know actually fucking dies.

a3n2• 5 years ago

It's the "but I'm here to tell you folks, it's real" story.

Some people just don't give a shit if it doesn't affect them personally.

flycaliguy• 5 years ago

This anti-vax nonsense has really tested my ability to not wish suffering on others. I’ve climbed that hill and found the empathy for these people, but it took actual mental effort.

Inate_Hikkers2• 5 years ago

I'm not conspiratorial but I am "vaccine hesitant" as they call it here in the US. For instance, if I theoretically got bitten by a rabid dog and I didn't want to die I would take the rabies vax. I personally disapprove of the COVID vaccine since it is very unusual for vaccines to be made in two days...and evidence regarding long-term side effects is scarce. However if taking the Covid vaccine meant I would get $10k in cash, then of course I would take it.

https://www.businessinsider.com/moderna-designed-coronavirus...

If you haven't seen my earlier comment I am the guy that DM'd you on reddit, I noticed your account was suspended and reverse searched the username.

ksec• 5 years ago

OK, so what were those reasons?

RyJones3• 5 years ago

The most convincing one was a version of "what if in 20 years they're running those ads like they did for mesothelioma?"

tobr• 5 years ago

I have a hunch there’s quite a few people who just don’t like needles, and are happy there are so many creative excuses to avoid getting the shot.

codyswann3• 5 years ago

I was asking the same thing the other day. No way to prove it, but I would say it's probably 25%.

Before this all started, I knew quite a few people who were just terrified of needles. Now, it's not that they're terrified, it's just [insert BS reason]

fmorel• 5 years ago

I'm prone to fainting when needles are involved, and I fainted at the pharmacy after my first shot. I still got my second one later. It's worth it.

williamstein• 5 years ago

You're right. Needle phobia is an officially recognized phobia, and there's a Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_needles) about it, with estimates from 10% to well over 20% of the US adult population being needle phobic. (I'm vaccinated and not needle phobic.)

scamper• 5 years ago

It me. I put off the needle for a long time—in fact my last shot was in 1991. Until last month. And hopefully that will be my last needle, since so many more humane methods of delivery are just around the corner.

squarefoot2• 5 years ago

Possibly, but they wouldn't make a noticeable number. The antivaxxers crowd is bigger and more motivated by the same nonsense. I wonder why they, including the same people who hate injections, never complained about mandatory vaccines for their kids, a practice that went on for decades in many countries? For example, most European countries had and still have 10 or more obligatory vaccinations for diseases that were finally defeated thanks to the practice, yet I have to meet one parent who refuses to let their kids receive it. I have good memory, and don't recall of anyone screaming when I was taking the anti-smallpox shot as a kid; it's just the same bullshit planted in their heads through social media.

The covid vaccine is newer, therefore not tested enough? Bullshit! Every vaccine has been "young" at some time. There are no records of people protesting back then about treatments against diphteria, meningitis, polyo and others.

There may be some side effects? Again a pile of bullshit. Lots of medicines can have side effects but people don't protest in the streets about that. Years back I took too many painkillers for my back pains, unfortunately they attacked my guts bacterial flora so I got an intestinal blockage while experiencing a sudden drop in blood red cells. I spent weeks taking tests and restoratives before it was clear I didn't have leukemia, which is present in my family and is what my father died of.

No, it's not fear of the needle, it's pure and simple politicized misinformation through social media and other sources. Those idiots follow what their leaders say without turning on the brain; no critical thinking, or any consideration for the evidence: they're the perfect army any corrupt politician would love to herd.

NotSwift2• 5 years ago

I have no real needle phobia but in the past I was never very fond of them either, because they felt unpleasant. But with my recent vaccinations I really could not tell when it started or ended. Modern injection needles are a lot smaller than the ones that were used a decade ago.

Some tips:

Try to relax your muscles. Lift your arms and let them fall down again.

Look away.

chrismcb• 5 years ago

I'm curious, if you are young, what are the reasons to get vaccinated?

iceyyou3• 5 years ago

to prevent the spread of disease

throwaway3neu94• 5 years ago

* Not infecting others who are more at risk or cannot get the vaccine (allergies, age, availability) or are higher risk than you (age, preconditions), including anti-vaxxers (I would be devastated if a beloved family members died even if they rejected the vaccine).

* Doing your part to wipe Covid out so we get back to normal (do you have a better plan?)

* Wiping Covid out so we don't get a worse strain like the delta strain that will affect younger people.

* The lag between a particularly bad strain circulating widely and you finding out about it.

* Long Covid including brain chronic fatigue / brain fog, potential non fatal but still permanent, debilitating lung damage, cardiovascular damage leading to increased risk of strokes later on. Which has been shown to be a risk for young people as well, more than death.

* Avoiding the massive inconvenience of a potential multi week "very bad flu".

* The medical experts (gov agencies, universities, industries) across the world all strongly recommending it. (Have you at least asked your primary care physician if you should get it? Why not?)

* Benefitting from the exemptions granted to vaccinated people such as indoor dining in NYC and entering the US from Europe and vice versa.

* Keeping your job when they mandate it unofficially or officially (I've seen both).

* The demonstrated risk of dying from covid, and even more so the risk of long covid, as a young person still being way higher than the theoretical / non demonstrated risk of the vaccine. Especially since we have already vaccinated >1.5 billion people - if anything should be seriously wrong with the vaccines, fixing that and helping affected people would likely immediately become an important topic of medical research as soon as we find out.

* Fringe benefits like the lotteries for vaccinated people.

* There being clear evidence of covid being downplayed for political reasons, especially in the US and in 2020. But everywhere else and in 2021 as well. Prominent politicians who have downplayed it still having gotten the vaccine (granted, they're all old people, and your question was about young people). The same politicians constantly retreating from one wrong position to another as they are proven wrong again and again. Whereas the "other side" has so far mostly been right on every major topic.

* Political players that normally don't agree on anything agreeing on this - Russia, China and the US all have a vaccine program and recommend vaccination for essentially everyone. Inside the US, the Democrats are obviously in favor of vaccination, but do not forget that two vaccines got emergency approval while the Republicans had control of all three branches.

* Young people being vaccinated and showing up in vaccination stats influencing older people to get vaccinated.

* Last and least all the anecdotes of people who on their deathbed said they should've gotten the damn vaccine.

CodeGlitch• 5 years ago

The more people it infects (even if it is young healthy people), the greater chance of more deadly strain. COVID-19 isn't that deadly, but is highly infectious. What happens if it mutates into something like this (another form of the coronavirus):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_respiratory_syndro...

(34% chance of death).

a3n2• 5 years ago

Social responsibility.

Covid can't live long outside a host, and it absolutely can't reproduce outside a host. It uses the host's cell reproduction mechanisms to reproduce. IT CANNOT REPRODUCE ON ITS OWN. That's why the virus infects you, so that it can reproduce, and its species can continue to exist. Its niche is to use the host's cell reproduction mechanisms to reproduce.

If we had strong herd immunity, then covid would likely become something deadly but manageable, because the spread would be limited and slower. Mutations would slow, because the mutations would have fewer opportunities to persist.

Everything that reproduces experiences genetic mutation. "Mistakes are made." Most mutations don't persist and don't have much effect. Some mutations cause the organism to die or otherwise fail to reproduce, limiting the mutation's persistence.

Some mutations do persist. Red hair. Downs syndrome. Etc.

The "life cycle" of a virus is very short and very fast. Anyone infected with the virus gives that virus an environment to reproduce, and to mutate. A lot.

All the variants we have, including Delta, which won't be the last, are because enough people gave the virus an environment to thrive.

If you are infected, even if you have no symptoms, then you are providing the virus a safe haven to reproduce, thrive, and mutate. And you will spread it to others.

As for immunity, we have two ways to acquire it. With the vaccine, your body produces an immune response without having to host, increase and spread the virus.

Without the vaccine, if you're infected, and you don't die, then you'll likely have some immunity. But you've also spread it to other people, who may die from it, and who will further spread it. And you'll all probably contribute to the next mutation.

"I'm not vaccinated, and I never got the virus." Maybe. You could have been infected without symptoms, and therefore you did spread it, possibly killing one or more people.

"I got covid, but didn't go to the hospital. I beat it!"

Or,

"I got covid, went to the hospital, but recovered. I beat it!"

No you didn't. You spread it to other people, and helped it mutate into something stronger and more deadly.

"My $PERSON got it, and died in the hospital. But that was their choice, it didn't affect anyone else."

Yes it did. They spread it to other people, and they consumed medical resources and staff that could have been used by other covid and non-covid patients.

It's not just you, it's the people around you that you will infect, and all the follow on results.

Get the fucking vaccine.

lamontcg• 5 years ago

Hospitalizations don't drop off anywhere near as fast as deaths do. About every 8 years younger halves the death rate, about every 15 years younger halves the hospitalization rate.

And delta has a hospitalization rate which is across the board twice the rate of alpha (with age/sex/deprivation/comorbidity-matched patients).

The virus is also not done mutating and is facing evolutionary pressure to become more transmissible, which is mostly through the mechanism of increased viral loads which has the knock-on effect of increasing virulence and hospitalization/death rates. In the short term it isn't getting any better and its only getting worse (turns out viruses don't always naturally evolve to become less virulent, and epidemiologists have known that since the 90s).

The hospitalization rate for old D614G variant in 20 year olds was 1%, that should be up to 2% now with delta. The hospitalization rate of vaccination in 20 year olds is probably too low to be measurable. If you're worried about 1-in-10,000 or worse vaccine side effects you should be much more worried about the virus landing you in the hospital (even though it probably won't kill you).

Vaccines also don't cause outbreaks of side effects months or years later. The vaccine is cleared in a few days, all that remains is the immune system response. That immune response can cause autoimmune side effects just like any virus can cause autoimmune side effects. What we know from a couple hundred years of studying viruses and vaccines is that the side effects appear in 90 days or they don't. There's no lingering time bombs, the immune system doesn't work that way (that would be a fantastically shitty way for the immune system to evolve, so it didn't).

And the mRNA vaccines are just a fragment of the virus genome that cannot reproduce which is packaged in a lipid (fat) particle that will get naturally shredded. It is both as close to "natural" as we can make it to have a low side effect profile and its also highly effective. If you manage to get naturally infected you get a pile of other shit from the virus genome plus self-replicating virions trying to kill you, which is all worse, nothing better.

And due to the concept of original antigenic sin you really do want to have your first exposure to the virus be something which your immune system mounts a strong defense to and learns how to clear the virus without killing you. If you get infected for real and wind up in the hospital your maladaptive response to the virus may wind up causing you problems down the road as the virus becomes endemic and you get infected with a different strain in the future. You should be worried about the long-term effects of that a lot more than the long-term effects of the vaccine.

NotSwift2• 5 years ago

When you are young and care about other people, you should really get vaccinated. When there are many vaccinated individuals the number of infections drops dramatically, which helps to protect vulnerable individuals (some of them might be young).

dwaltrip• 5 years ago

Given the stakes, it is a small ask. It will help end the pandemic.

kyriakos2• 5 years ago

We have young people in icu too. Young means less likely but still possible to get very sick and die from covid.

senectus12• 5 years ago

we had a 20yr old, unvaccinated die suddenly from covid just yesterday :-( No co-morb and otherwise very fit and healthy.

How long until people LEARN.

bogota• 5 years ago

Hard to read this it’s just way too editorialized by the author. We get it you’re mad about the pandemic and how it’s handled. Supposedly being a doctor gives you more credibility but only on vaccinations not on public health policy.

Anyway im sick of reading articles with no other point than to make you mad. But its HP what can you expect.

Edit: not really going to argue with anyone my point stands. Just another stupid piece made to make people mad. Your comments further reinforce this. Be mad but it doesn’t help.

ghthor• 5 years ago

IMO Most of the "unvaccinated" are that way because they've already had covid and would rather be part of the control group for this large experiment. I just don't buy articles like this for the reason you stated.

cblackthornekc3• 5 years ago

You would be the first person that I've heard say hey I already got it, therefore I'm not getting vaccinated.

Even if you've gotten covid, go get vaccinated

elp• 5 years ago

A colleague of mine just lost his best friend. It was the second time he had the virus. They think it was two different variants.

Something like 2.4 billion people have had at least one shot of vaccine. How many more need to before you think its safe?

ergot_vacation• 5 years ago

Agreed. This kind of "journalism" is sheer garbage, whether it's supporting your viewpoint or not, and probably poses a more serious risk to the country than Covid ever will.

mcphage• 5 years ago

probably poses a more serious risk to the country than Covid ever will

"Person angry about 600,000 deaths a bigger risk to country than thing that caused 600,000 deaths" is a pretty bold claim.

smt88• 5 years ago

Why shouldn't people be mad about this? The point is that medical professionals are horrified and frustrated, and this article is helping us understand why.

iceyyou3• 5 years ago

You shouldn't read editorials then, they're usually editorialized.

Supposedly being a doctor gives you more credibility but only on vaccinations

We can drop the "supposedly" and vaccinations are what's being discussed.

The point is that an expert has watched people die because of irrational behavior on the part of anti-vaxxers. Not "to make you mad." You should try reading the article!

cblackthornekc3• 5 years ago

Still haven't gotten vaccinated and need to know where to go?

https://www.vaccines.gov/

stmfreak3• 5 years ago

Nope and nope. Waiting for phase three trials to complete.

codyswann3• 5 years ago

What can phase three trials show us that an empirical trial of a billion people can’t?

jfengel2• 5 years ago

Phase 3 trials were concluded last year. That's why the vaccines are available.

https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

Did you mean that you were waiting for the regular use authorization rather than the emergency use authorization? OK, that's expected early next month:

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

You might want to make your reservation early, since I hear a lot of people claiming that they're waiting for that. Of course it's the very same vaccine that's available today; it's just a matter of going over the paperwork to make sure all of the i's are dotted and t's crossed.

tiahura• 5 years ago

At this point, we need to recognize the genie isn’t going back in the bottle. COVID 19 isn’t going away by Easter or when warm weather arrives, or when…

Vaccinate yourself, get a booster when they come out, and stop waiting for herd immunity. It will be here right after herd immunity for the cold and flu set in.

bserge3• 5 years ago

I can't get antidepressants partly because of these people. And partly because doctors think they know better than everyone else.

And also because they simply outright refuse to see me or they got too many patients.

Just let me sign a waiver so I can get my medication freely, I don't need any other healthcare (no point in fixing a broken leg when you're dead, right?)

nprateem• 5 years ago

codersteve• 5 years ago

Did you see the line near the bottom of the article:

>However, McCann said her brother had asthma in an earlier tweet on 3 July.

mindcrime2• 5 years ago

I really don't understand the anti-vaxxers. I mean, OK, when the vaccine first came out, I could understand a small measure of hesitancy. Hell, I even said something to the effect of "I don't necessarily want to be first in line."

But at this point, the vaccines have been given to, what, billions of people? And the number of people who have suffered severe ramifications that can be attributed to a vaccine rounds to zero. And as far as "Well, we don't know the long-term effects" arguments go... OK, superficially that sounds reasonable. But there isn't, to the best of my knowledge, even a good theoretical explanation of how/why to expect any long-term effects. The vaccine itself is eliminated from your system in a few days if I understand correctly, leaving behind only anti-bodies manufactured by your body.

So yeah, I guess it's possible, in principle, that 3 years from now, or 10 years from now, or whatever, people that took the vaccine could start keeling over spontaneously, or growing third eyeballs in the center of their foreheads or something. But the odds of that happening seem way, way, way beyond even "ludicrously low". To my way of thinking, it "rounds to impossible". So I'd like to know why these folks think differently and apparently expect something bad to happen if they take the vaccine.

codyswann3• 5 years ago

Anti-vaxxers' rallying cry is "WE DON'T KNOW THE LONG TERM EFFECTS YET!"

Which means, I guess they'll get the shot in 50 years?

dave333• 5 years ago

the short term effect is without the vaccine you can be dead in three weeks so there's no logic behind what they are saying, just political will.

senectus12• 5 years ago

was having this exact conversation with my wife last night.

my nephew and his mother are being very hesitant because "the vaccine is so new and untested"...

They don't have any issue getting the flu vaccine every year...

I just don't understand their mindset.

kcplate2• 5 years ago

I think “being statistically unlikely of a negative outcome” is the wrong argument though. That argument can be made regarding COVID-19 as well as the vaccines, particularly among the largest age demographic currently expressing vaccine hesitation. They are statistically unlikely to die from Covid too.

The best thing to do at least in the US is for the FDA to fully approve the vaccine, both for adults and for children. I suspect you will always have 10-15% that are vaccine holdouts no matter what, but until there is full FDA approval, you will never ever reach 70-75%.

stmfreak3• 5 years ago

These vaccines aren’t even a year old. If there were long term side effects, do you think they would show up in a few months? Have we even had enough time to see if people are having trouble getting pregnant? Let alone get vaccinated and then gestate a child to term.

Sure, act like the vaccines have been around forever. You are revealing your age. Some of us have seen this show before in 2009 and in the 1970s. Even with the best intentions, scientists make mistakes.

mindcrime2• 5 years ago

If there were long term side effects, do you think they would show up in a few months?

Perhaps not. But, again, does anybody have any particular reason, including even a theoretical justification, for believing there will be "long term side effects?" Given that the actual vaccine material is eliminated from your system in a matter of days, leaving behind only anti-bodies that were produced by your body?

I mean, sure, one can play the "anything is possible" card, but that is the same card that lets one claim that we are living in The Matrix, or that there is an invisible teapot in orbit around the Sun somewhere between Earth and Mars.

Sure, act like the vaccines have been around forever.

I'm not.

You are revealing your age.

I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that, and even if I were, what does my age have to do with anything?

My point was, and remains, that nobody has put forth anything by way of either actual evidence, or a plausible theoretical argument, that seems to justify any strong belief in as-yet-unseen long term side effects of the various vaccines.

Alupis7• 5 years ago

Folks - if someone you know is not vaccinated at this point in time (in the US) - it's entirely on them if they get sick. And guess what - they already know this, made that decision, and nothing you rant and rave about is going to change it.

Quit trying to drum up some mandatory vaccine rhetoric - or villianize these people. Just leave them alone and go about your life in whatever way you think is appropriate for your own wellbeing.

Vaccinated people do not need to wear masks to protect unvaccinated people at this point in time.

It's time to stop catering policy towards a small percentage of the population that has decided for whatever reason to not get vaccinated. These people largely understand what they are doing - leave them alone and get on with life!

onychomys• 5 years ago

A gentle reminder that no children under 12 have been vaccinated yet, and so the behavior of unvaccinated adults affects more people than you're talking about here.

Alupis7• 5 years ago

Statistics seem to imply children under 12 are nearly 100% safe (so far). This is a major reason the vaccine hasn't been prioritized for children.

If children were at serious risk here, a children vaccine would have been prioritized long ago - well before we prioritized getting vaccines to the 75 and older age group.

The entire duration of the pandemic has seen such a miniscule amount of infected children - and even fewer with serious symptoms or death - that it's absurd to base policy on this. It's statistically far more likely children will die on their way to school than become ill and experience serious complications.

We should stop basing policy off likelihoods which are prefixed by multiple zeros.

tablespoon2• 5 years ago

And the immunocompromised, who can be vaccinated AND remain vulnerable afterwards.

sollewitt• 5 years ago

Children exist.

csw-0012• 5 years ago

A couple of thoughts here. (1) There are a significant number of people relying on us reaching herd immunity because they either can't get the vaccine, or if they can get it they might not be fully protected by it. For that population, getting everyone vaccinated IS important and worth attempting. (2) More importantly, a spike in hospitalizations could threaten the healthcare system as a whole if we run out of ICU beds, exhaust doctors, expend billions in care, etc. The cost of the unvaccinated isn't borne just by them - its paid by all of us when they show up in the hospital needing expensive care, and/or we are forced to shutdown our economy out of concern over overfilled ICUs. That makes a discussion of mandatory vaccination completely reasonable, and not simply rhetorical.

We should have tied CARES Act payments to vaccination... I'm guessing a $500 check would have persuaded almost everybody to get the shot. In the end the ROI of herd immunity might have been worth it?

Alupis7• 5 years ago

We're spent trillions already, and seem to be on course for a few more. At some point, the cost and devastation to the economy outweighs the costs of the pandemic. It's dark and brutal - but that's how high level policy has to be formed, ie. it's an unreasonable goal to prevent 100% of illnesses and death.

(1) There are a significant number of people relying on us reaching herd immunity

Herd Immunity can be reached either by vaccinations, previous infections, or both. We're well on track to reach the "both" mark, or possibly are already past it.

BrandoElFollito• 5 years ago

You may want to have av word with my wife who is under strong immunodepressants and did not react to the vaccine. Three times. Two kind of vaccines.

The healthy unvaccinated dickheads idiots, because they are idiots but do not realize it, should simply be forced to get a vaccine or be put aside from society.

And because they are idiots and won't understand it anyway, do not spend to much resources trying to explain that.

jimmygrapes3• 5 years ago

Imagine if the same was said for criminality.

revalo3• 5 years ago

Adding to the thoughts before, letting the virus spread and mutate among the unvaccinated to create a new variant sounds like a reset on the progress we've made. With the Delta we got lucky, our vaccines still largely work. I'm not sure how long the luck will hold on with more variants.

I'm all for leaving people alone to their own decisions. But with this, their decisions greatly affect me and society at large.

Alupis7• 5 years ago

You won't stop mutations. It's a pandemic, world-wide - and short of blocking all international travel, freight/shipping, etc - if there is a new mutation somewhere in the world, it will eventually land here in the US.

Herd immunity - either reached by vaccinations, previous-infections, or both - is all we can hope for.

Good news is, we don't need unvaccinated people's cooperation to reach herd immunity - they will eventually have natural immunity anyway.

simplyunjustly2• 5 years ago

Pretty odd article to see from fellow doctor and someone who gets angry at stuff like this probably should find another career. Is she angry at the patients who abused their bodies all their lives, resulting in their inpatient stay? All the heart failure patients who simply refuse to follow simple instructions that would keep them out of the hospital? I just looked, 42% of the patients on our inpatient floor with COVID-19 were vaccinated (this is a small hospital, so I'm not making any conclusion based on that).

jaywalk5• 5 years ago

I know a doctor at a hospital and he said that the current percentage of vaccinated Covid admissions is very close to the overall percentage of vaccinated people in his area.

CarelessExpert9• 5 years ago

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Every jurisdiction reporting actual, real data and not just rumours on Fox News has indicated that over 90% of Covid admissions are unvaccinated, even in areas with greater than 50% of the population with two doses.

xiphias2• 5 years ago

I just visited my grandmother's sister's family in the villages. They're not vaccinated at all, because they think that the vaccine is more dangerous than the Delta variant.

I was much more sad than angry, especially not at them: the political system confused people too much. I think we should all do what we can for unvaccinated people, but at this time it's all their personal responsability even if the misinformation was created on purpuse.

umvi3• 5 years ago

Once upon a time there was town called Statisticsville with a population of 1000 people. Every year around 8 people die. Sometimes 7, sometimes 9. One year, a new infectious disease came along and killed 2 additional people (both elderly). The population nearly had a civil war over these additional 2 deaths because some people thought the additional 2 deaths could have been prevented with better enforced public health practices while the other group thought it wasn't worth the social/economic costs. Looking forward to the next year, the people were still divided into two groups - those who were worried that the infectious disease might kill another person, and those that didn't really care much. The discord and contention between the groups escalated with each side increasingly rigid and unable to empathize with the other side until violence broke out and Statisticsville descended into anarchy.

The End

poslathian• 5 years ago

Not sure why downvoted. Do people think this comment indicates you are an antivaxxer? Which part of the comment suggests that?

stevenalowe2• 5 years ago

perhaps the part where the virus death rate is off by a factor of 10

jfengel2• 5 years ago

The part where the "economic costs" of preventing the disease have been reduced to cheap masks and free vaccines, and yet they're still somehow too high. Because it was never really about the economic costs, but about a longstanding culture war.

rstuart41332• 5 years ago

That sounds odd way for people to behave. Perhaps there is something else going on in Statisticsville that wasn't mentioned?

Maybe, even though only 2 people died, another 8 got admitted to hospital with a serious life threatening disease. Of the 6 that were discharged, 2 suffered continuous relapses requiring multiple readmissions and major life style changes (like stopping work).

Or perhaps there was something significant about the extra 2 that died. Maybe, rather being in retirement, they were in their 30's, shouldering the peak of adult responsibilities like child raising?

rstuart41332• 5 years ago

Replying to myself, from https://theconversation.com/s-165250 :

For younger people who are unwell enough to be hospitalised with COVID-19, the outcomes can be quite serious. A large study from the United Kingdom showed 27% of 19 to 29-year-olds admitted to hospital suffered some form of organ damage to the liver, lungs or kidneys

CivBase2• 5 years ago

Most people aren't doctors, epidemiologists, or scientists of any sort. Nobody can be experts at everything, so we rely on expert authorities to break things down for us. Since we're not experts ourselves, we cannot independently verify what the experts are saying, which means our relationship with them is built on trust. But what happens when a nation becomes so fiercely divided along political lines that we collectively stop trusting expert authorities?

What's more, people don't like being told they're wrong. They especially don't like being talked down to. When experts (and more importantly, those arguing on social media on behalf of those experts) use demeaning language to address critics and people with concerns, the people don't respond well. Some of them will begrudgingly admit they were wrong, but humans are not purely logical creatures. Many will write off those who talk down to them as malicious or corrupt and use that as justification to disregard what they say.

We all need to start showing more respect to one another. Be patient and compassionate when dealing with people who are currently opposed to getting vaccinated - even if they don't show you the same courtesy. It wont earn you fake internet points and you're certainly not guaranteed to convince them of anything, but you'll never reach them doing anything else.

wolverine8762• 5 years ago

We don't like talking politics here on HN, but we can't hide from the truth: It's not an issue of respect or political polarization. It's the right-wing political movement which has an extreme ideology of reactionaryism. No matter what the issue or situation, they will be against it.

Talking more respectfully to them won't change it. It's not possible to talk to them, because most public communication is filtered through reactionary propaganda. For example, President Biden is generally respectful, but cannot reach them.

If we don't deal with this movement now, it will continue to grow stronger. Clearly there are no limits to it: Vaccination and masks to prevent a pandemic disease, attempts to overturn an election and seize power, etc.

CivBase2• 5 years ago

I can't disagree more.

Doesn't it feel a little too convenient to label your opposition as "beyond saving"? And how do you propose we "deal with this movement now" if you've convinced yourself they can't be reasoned with? I know it's not true from first hand experience. I've convinced a dozen people with hard-right political ideologies to get the vaccine. It hasn't always worked, but I've had much more success than not.

Respect is difficult, but it works. And you'll never be able to justifiably expect others to respect you if you don't respect them first. Be the change you want to see.

Also, one person being respectful is not enough to change things at scale - especially someone in as naturally divisive a position as POTUS.

yread• 5 years ago

I thought there would be more stuff that the patients actually sad, in the end it was just

intubation kills patients

they wish for chest compressions without intubation in the event of a respiratory arrest (what?)

they refuse to wear “muzzles” when grocery shopping

they didn’t get vaccinated because they “just didn’t get around to it”

mickotron• 5 years ago

My country (Australia) has botched their rollout.

I wanted to get vaccinated, registered my "interest" to get vaccinated months ago, then waited for the invitation to book an appointment, booked my first, then second appointment.

This process took months, amid shortages in Pfizer, waiting times of more than an hour on the phone to book appointments, their online booking system simply not working during high demand.

What I'm saying is, as a person highly motivated to get vaccinated, it wasn't easy.

Our gov and officials tell us how lazy we are to not be vaccinated, but I can understand why a lot of people aren't. In some cases it is made too hard to jump through all the hoops.

I’m an ICU Doctor and I Can't Believe What Unvaccinated Patients Are Saying

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