D&D and the rising pandemic

[Maxperson]

Well, my second vaccination is kicking my butt. Had a high fever all night. Seem pretty okay now though, if a bit weak. I'd call that a worthwhile trade-off to be doing my part, though. I don't think the goal is necessarily to have no side-effects - as long as the side-effects just involve discomfort. I can handle discomfort.

I'm sorry to hear that. Some of my friends got hit hard like that. My wife and I were blessed to just have sore arms for a few days.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This goes especially for the immune-compromised.

This part of the reason I'm sticking with masking most places, even though both I and my wife have had both shots.

Because I'm not the only damn person out there.

And at least some of those are people who for one reason or another don't actually have a choice about getting protected. This can include people who are dependent on various kinds of vac-resistant people to get it done and people who can't do it for medical reasons. These aren't the whole of the people who are unvaccinated--but you know what, even when it comes to them, I don't feel a need to make medical personnel deal with yet one more person dying on their watch right now (I was briefly hospitalized earlier this year, and talking to some of the nurses and other staff while I was there about it brought home just how ugly this has been for them).

Most folks have a case of covid, and are then done with it. There's "long-covid". But there's also the problem of those with weakened immune systems that never quite clear the infection, and it is in these individuals that variants are most likely to arise. They are also typically among the folks who can't get vaccinated.

So, we really need to vaccinate everyone we can, to protect those who cannot, because those who cannot are the ones most likely to generate a variant that might evade the vaccine.

And that's a thing, too. Minimizing the breeding ground to the extent you can is kind of a moral obligation, and since you can't make other people get vaccinated, you can at least try to make it matter less that they didn't.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'm sorry to hear that. Some of my friends got hit hard like that. My wife and I were blessed to just have sore arms for a few days.

A sore arm is all I got from Shot#1. Maybe I should have taken it easy, but I went right to work after getting my 2nd dose, and I lugged heavy boxes around for 8 hours. Who knows, it could have happened to me either way. I was freezing in the night (and it's really really not cold here). Teeth chattering cold. Not so bad now, though.

Thanks for the well-wishes!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

'Those deaths were preventable': Unvaccinated parts of country are driving the pandemic now

Virtually all deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. are now among people who have not received a coronavirus vaccine. And those deaths are highly concentrated in counties — many of them in the Midwest and Southeast — where vaccination rates are precariously low.

www.yahoo.com

At this point:

1) Delta is the dominant strain and is accointing for most of the new infections in the USA.
2) 99.5% of C19 deaths are people who were not vaccinated.

 

[CapnZapp]

The problem here is that in England, out of the last 90kish(going from memory) cases of Covid, close to 21k had at least 1 dose of the vaccine, and about 7k were fully vaccinated. The Delta variant isn't leaving the vaccinated untouched, so it's not just the anti-vaxers who will be hit by this.

Not sure why you decided to begin your reply with "the problem" as if you're arguing with me or against my points.

Okay, is my response.

 

[CapnZapp]

So we need to find ways to persuade enough vaccine-hesitant folks to change their minds, until we can get to herd immunity and the spread is controllable. Incentives, like lotteries, are one approach. Another would have been to keep mask mandates until the percentage of folks fully vaccinated hit herd immunity levels... a percentage which most parts of the world are very far from achieving (and even the U.S. is frustratingly short).

Very commendable.

None of that's going to happen, though.

(Unless there's a mutation that renders the vaccine obsolete, our countries will just tough it out)

 

[CapnZapp]

That's what a French virologist was warning of earlier this year (maybe even as far back as end of 2020) - the risk of a vaccine-resistant virus, similar to super-bugs.

Except how practically useless such a warning is.

After all, unless there's a practical course of action we can take, all we can do is shrug and hope for the best.

 

[Zardnaar]

Apparently there's been a balls up here. They sent out 1.7 million texts saying you can get a vaccine sometime in July.

The big problem being they don't have 1.7 million doses of vaccine.

Oops.

Australia has been one of the better countries to be on with Covid but the current outbreak in areas apparently is outpacing contact tracing and it's the delta variant.

Various labour shortages continues, nurses going on strike and Aussies are trying to recruit said nurses (they pay a lot more).

Side effect of the Covid bailouts house prices went up 25% last year. Cheap in parts of my city it hit 40%


Said nurses get paid more, better conditions less hours and cheaper cost of living.

Already short staffed and there's some other normal virus that missed it's yearly rounds last year but seems to be double strength this year filling up the hospitals.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Except how practically useless such a warning is.

After all, unless there's a practical course of action we can take, all we can do is shrug and hope for the best.

Not useless at all.

While vaccine hesitancy is a thing, it’s mostly confined to a minority of the populations of nations with a pretty good supply of vaccines.

The REAL problem lies in those nations that have low vaccination rates mainly because they can’t get vaccines. Unless and until those nations get their vaccination rates up where the front-runners are now, C19 mutations will continue to erupt from their populations. While most mutations won’t be any more dangerous than the current crop (and most will be LESS so), a “superbug” could emerge at any time.

IOW, the pandemic won’t really end until we’re ahead of C19 on ALL fronts.

So, as a practical matter, ensuring those less developed nations get sufficient amounts of vaccines- including the ability to manufacture them in their own regions- is the proper course of action.

Looking further into the future, it’s probably in our long-term best interests as a species to continue to fund and even expand research into emergent pathogens in less developed nations.

 

[Maxperson]

Not sure why you decided to begin your reply with "the problem" as if you're arguing with me or against my points.

Okay, is my response.

Because it was an argument against your points. With very significant numbers of vaccinated people coming down with the Delta variant, you can't just say, "Well, just let those who aren't vaccinated deal with it. They had the choice and refused." Those unvaccinated people will be giving Covid to a significant number of people who did the right thing and got the vaccine.