outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

god yes

seriously! like the vaccine, trucks should be pulling up at every intersection and throwing those things at us.

We do literally have trucks in our town handing out rapid test kits. Have done for months.

TBF, the only reason that you'd do something like that is that you want to contain the pandemic, to make the numbers go down. Our leaders clearly have a different perspective on things.

I think that tweet is BS. The people who are declining to get vaccinated don't distrust our health care system in general. They use the health care system and expect it to serve their needs for everything else. They distrust one particular initiative of our health care system because the political elites they trust find it useful, for their own purposes, to spread the idea that Fauci is Mengele and the vaccine signup site at Walgreens is the New World Order.

They use the health care system and expect it to serve their needs for everything else.

That's probably the majority. There is also a percentage of the vaccine refusers who are new-age types who actively distrust the health care system and seek all their care from alternative providers. But they just as actively publicize their 'reasons' for this, so all anyone has to do to find out what they think is to read their polemics. It's nothing mysterious or hidden.

Their reasons are almost entirely based in over-generalizing events from personal experience, anecdotal evidence peddled by their compatriots, and a strong wishful-thinking desire to exert a magical control over their lives. That, and the fact that capitalism applied ferociously to for-profit health care sucks ass.

The people who are declining to get vaccinated don't distrust our health care system in general.

The best predictor of vax status is insured status IIRC.

Honestly I tried to get a flu shot at the same time as my booster and was rudely reminded that flu shots are only covered by insurance or else you have to pay. Reader: I wasn't sure I had $25 (or however much it is) in my bank account so I did not get a flu shot.

xp you recall incorrectly

https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/importance-of-partisanship-predicting-vaccination-status/

Perhaps there's great overlap with uninsured people and Republican voters, but the uninsured remain the demographic with the lowest vax rates - from the data used in that article

https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-october-2021/

The difference is that the uninsured are less likely to be steadfastly refusing - they just aren't 'taking advantage' of our healthcare system, which is the thing eephus said isn't happening.

What am I missing from the page you linked? The uninsured do not "remain the demographic with the lowest vax rates." 18% of uninsured people say they will definitely not get vaccinated in contrast to 31% of Republicans who say they will definitely not get vaccinated. Uninsured Americans as a group are also less than a third the size of Republican voters, to say nothing of right-leaning non-voters and right leaning "independent" voters, so I don't see how the raw number of uninsured people refusing vaccines can surpass the number of Republicans refusing vaccines.

Additionally, there is no "great overlap with uninsured people and Republican voters." Rates of uninsured Republicans only just surpassed that of uninsured Democrats in the Trump era, and the margin between them is not large and is possibly owing to partisanship, in that Republicans vote for politicians who haven't expanded Medicare.

https://slate.com/business/2018/05/why-the-uninsured-rate-is-rising-and-only-for-republicans.amp

You said the best predictor of vax status is insured status. This is incorrect. The best predictor of vax status is political affiliation.

The uninsured do not "remain the demographic with the lowest vax rates."

Correct, I forgot rural residents. The uninsured are the second-lowest vaccinated population (59% to 58%).

18% of uninsured people say they will definitely not get vaccinated in contrast to 31% of Republicans

"The difference is that the uninsured are less likely to be steadfastly refusing - they just aren't 'taking advantage' of our healthcare system, which is the thing eephus said isn't happening."

All of which proves the point of the tweet about access - people who don't regularly have access to are (correctly) suspicious of our healthcare system. They're also more likely to be low-income workers, which makes finances/time off part of the equation. I'm doing okay financially and I delayed my second dose multiple times because I couldn't budget 24 hours to deal with potential (and as it turned out actual) side effects - the same with my booster.

It might be comforting to believe that the unvaccinated are all just a bunch of 1/6 reenactors waiting to get in on the game for round 2, but reality is more complicated.

Your statement that insurance status was the biggest predictor of vax status was wrong and you're trying to rationalize your words into you somehow being not wrong. The most annoying part is that I know you know how to read a chart and interpret data reasonably and you pretend not to know.

It's true that education, insurance status, and hours worked affect vaccination status. It's trivial and uncontroversial to say so. It also doesn't change the fact that partisanship and partisan misinformation have clearly, demonstrably, numerically verifiably played a larger part in vaccination status for a 10 month old free vaccine than insurance status or income level.

I won't read your reply because you're a clown and it's useless to talk to you.

Your statement that insurance status was the biggest predictor of vax status was wrong and you're trying to rationalize your words into you somehow being not wrong.

The article you posted is about who makes up the most unvaccinated people, which is a different question. On an individual level, rural residents and the uninsured are both more likely to be unvaccinated than "Republicans."

Oh my god move ON

sounds like we should vilify individuals then

only if they don't wear a fucking mask

I "get" vaccine reluctance even though I may not agree with it, but a lot of people defending its adherents itt are ignoring that a lot of these fucks won't wear a mask either

signed, guy who just yelled at some massless asshole I n the 7-11

lol "maskless"

Yeah, my trio of antivaxxer chucklefucks neighbors have been aggressively maskless in our building over the past two years. It'll be intersting to see if anything changes now that cases have jumped like 400% in a week (in a city with a nearly 90% fully-vaxxed rate).

But tbf, most of our neighbors are aggressively maskless at this point. I was in our generally unpopulated storage area this afternoon when someone whose storage cage thing is right next to mine popped in maskless and was all like 'oh, tee hee, didn't realize anyone was in here!' and pulled her turleneck over her mouth like that's a fucking thing we're doing in late 2021. I just split rather than being all 'are you not at all concerned about my vaccination status and being right up in my face, even if only for the sake of your unvaccinated two-year-old?!?'.

There are a whole lot of people in my world who I'm never going to be able to see as non-idiots when this is all over.

My sister works in a post office with two men who apparently proudly and loudly refused to get vaccinated, and both have now been in hospital w covid, are back home on oxygen, and changed their tunes but now they can't get their shots for 90 days or whatever.

I do think there are a lot of vaccinated folk that, somehow, someway, managed to have missed the boat on the fact that it doesn't stop transmission like thought during Alpha wave, and that the protection definitely waned.

my best friend often was going out to restaurants the last few months, no mask, though he'd bring one when I went out with him. he never could give me a real reason why not - other than he didn't seem to think it was that big of a risk.

It seems ludicrous because it wasn't like this news was confined to fringe resources, but on talking to people each day, it really seems like a bunch of people think they're more protected than they are against these variants due to being vaccinated. or are convinced they'll know when they catch it and not transmit to anybody.

my other best friend was starting to slack on masks but after listening to me talk to her about the risks, started doing it again. <3

and neither of them were "COVID is overblown" folks either is the weird part. the latter friend got it and would send me her symptoms every day for a month, and wound up losing her job due to quarantining responsibly.

(this was in April of 2020)

two men who apparently proudly and loudly refused to get vaccinated, and both have now been in hospital w covid, are back home on oxygen, and changed their tunes

those fucks are lucky to be home and alive. the worst stories are the 'proudly unvaxxed' who literally beg the nurses for anything that could save them, before being put into deep sedation, on a ventilator, and die two weeks later.

https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/rakxun/my_career_of_treating_patients_has_ended/

I do think there are a lot of vaccinated folk that, somehow, someway, managed to have missed the boat on the fact that it doesn't stop transmission like thought during Alpha wave, and that the protection definitely waned.

I think you are totally correct about that, based on my experiences over the past few days - the guy in the 7-11 said the same thing - "hey I'm vaccinated" - SO WHAT YOU CAN STILL SPREAD IT

People who just stop listening WAY too soon: C/D?

gonna have to say "Dud" there

yeah people tend to go with what they heard first, or their shitty layman's interpretation, which is a problem. Like when the first anecdotes came out of South Africa that most cases were milder (before we had even any empirical data), people have been saying "IT'S A MILDER WAVE, WHO CARES", and not backing down from that stance. even though the epis very much are still saying that's not been proven to be the case AND it'd have to be a much, much, much milder wave to keep hospitalizations down.

Director Walensky during Alpha said it didn't seem that vaccinated could catch or transmit the disease, and that's all anybody remembers. Honestly during the beginning of Delta, I had stopped masking because they told us vaccination effectiveness was holding, and I believed that we were unlikely to spread. as soon as that new report came out regarding Provincetown, I went back to it immediately. but a LOT of people didn't because they were still operating under the assumption that we couldn't spread.

like whose fault is it if people don't listen? Scientists kinda get blamed when they 'speak too soon', but if they say nothing at all people ask why the silence. I do not envy them. CDC has sucked though.

(that being said, there *was* a preprint today that was optimistic on reduction of hospitalization, but pre-prints scare me and are often of varying quality, so I won't be sharing it).

of course it's political. what do the right-wingers in this country believe? what consistent principles do they have? just one - Lets Go Brandon/Make America Great Again Again/whatever makes the liberals mad. who are the ones making the most noise about how everyone should get vaccinated? there's your answer. these people do not see anything as a threat unless it's right in front of their noses. of course they're going to die easily preventable deaths as soon as a pandemic came along.

maybe one for the shitty NYT opinionbot but I truly believe our death toll would be lower had Trump gotten re-elected. for the dumbest possible reason, of course. Trump would've tried to convince the country that he alone invented the vaccine. all the libs would've gotten it anyway because we don't think like that. if you wanna die to trigger your political enemies hey, more power to ya

He got booed for mentioning the vaccine in late spring. I'm not entirely convinced they listen to him on anything, he's just the avatar of their collective id. Trump would have had to make the CDC go on TV and tell you not to take the vaccine to get the oppositional defiance as ideology crowd to sign on wholeheartedly.

well sure, but his crowd seemed pretty into the vaccine when he was in office. they only oppose it now cuz Biden wouldn't shut up about it

fresh wave of bad reviews for yankee candles pic.twitter.com/1mlandB78I

— drewtoothpaste (@drewtoothpaste) December 21, 2021

Milo makes a good point, what I said should be taken to apply only to the set of people it applies to (which is a lot of people)

Here is the head of NYC corrections sounding the alarm: 1% of prisoners were COVID positive until recently, 9.5% yesterday, over 17% today. He “implores” us to stop sending people to rikers. pic.twitter.com/RkfIYz5NtB

— Sarah Lustbader (@SarahLustbader) December 22, 2021

[Thread] 1. NEW study on how sick (or not) #Omicron makes people in SA
Full study here: https://t.co/u07Q4W3vDq (preprint) pic.twitter.com/zrgeKxFSkQ

— Mia Malan (@miamalan) December 22, 2021

so this should surprise nobody, but FL's Department of Health is actively online on Twitter and attacking experts who are focused on the worsening numbers here. Like actually sitting chemists engaged in flame wars and siccing their followers on people like Howard Forman (an MD and Yale professor). they're using FL Dept of Health's own twitter account and their own personal ones to do this.

it's gross and definitely a sign DeSanthole is aspiring to Republican heights beyond being our governor

As funny as it is, I thought the Yankee Candle thing turned out that they changed the formula and it smells less now?

i know it's off-topic but yankee candles, christ, definitely one of the worst aspects of growing up around conservatives

as i remember them you absolutely have to be 100% anosmiac to not smell anything from them. i doubt they changed their formula that much.

what do they smell like

Complacency.

anyone care to look into the new walter reed vaccine and tell me all the ways in which it is good but also bad, the hope that it provides, but also the potential drawbacks which are already foreseeable and unfortunately mean that no, it's not yet time to be optimistic

Good news:

New data from Scotland and South Africa suggest people infected with the Omicron variant of coronavirus are at markedly lower risk of hospitalization than those who contracted earlier versions of the virus, promising signs that vaccines remain effective at warding off severe illness with the fast-spreading strain.

Scientists caution, though, that Omicron’s heightened transmissibility—and its ability to sidestep immunity from vaccination or prior infection—means it still has the potential to cause further waves of sickness and death simply by infecting many more people.

“The combination of increased risk of transmission and immune evasion of Omicron mean that any advantage in reduced hospitalization could potentially be exceeded by increased rates of infection in the community,” said researchers at the University of Edinburgh in a paper detailing their findings that is still to be peer-reviewed.

The Edinburgh study, drawing on the health records of 5.4 million people in Scotland, found the risk of hospitalization with Covid-19 was two-thirds lower with Omicron than with Delta.

If I'm reading it right, there's no news there at all? It's just saying more Scottish people are vaccinated now than in 2020.

for real, did any of you read anything about the Walter Reed/US Army vaccine? the one that broke last night?

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/12/us-army-creates-single-vaccine-effective-against-all-covid-sars-variants/360089/

i realize reading a military-focused publication is going to make some of your lower intestines spontaneously explode. but this seems extremely promising to me, like incredibly EXTREMELY promising to me? am i fucking crazy?