oldmanfan

Point by point: 1. I do not think the individual I was communicating with has had Covid and thus would not have natural immunity. We are not sure how long natural immunity lasts as of yet as well. 2. Congress screwed the small business owner. I said at the time money should go to those businesses and not the large corporations. 3. Before delta variant I would have agreed that children should be back without masks. Infections and hospital admissions in children has risen greatly in children, because the younger kids can’t be vaccinated and they are being used as political pawns. Kids should be back in school with masking as I have already indicated, all school employees should be vaccinated, and local communities monitor local infection and vaccination rates to dictate policies. Masks work as a mitigation, I have referred to the data, and that is incontrovertible. 4. Health care organizations like mine mandate Covid vaccination, just like we do for influenza and hepatitis. Why? Because the health of our patients come first. That’s the bottom line. I feel for our front line folks as I do for all health care workers dealing with this pandemic. They have been jncredible throughout this crisis. But the answer is simple: get vaccinated. Science says the benefits far outweigh any (mostly theoretical) risks, and health care workers should accept science. If you work in health care and have been vaccinated for other things but refuse Covid you have no leg to stand on. 5. What you call flip flopping is oftentimes how science and medicine work in a situation like a pandemic involving a new virus. As new data comes in you adjust recommendations. That said, communication should have been clearer in the last and current administration. Your comments seem to ignore how you best deal with a viral pandemic. You band together as a people and a community and do the things science tells you that work to halt progress and allow our way of life and economy to return. And that is vaccination. History tells us that. The alternative of just letting things go and relying on natural immunity would eventually work but at the cost of millions more lives. Is your answer anarchy?

I hope you’ll be OK. The mandate is because it is a public health issue. It does look like the delta may be burning out; hopefully the my or other variants don’t rise up. I think the most disappointing thing about Covid, apart from all the deaths of course, is it has revealed that we cannot come together as a society at a time of crisis. Watching the 9/11 coverage crystallized this thought for me. We used to band together as a society to defeat a common enemy.

Yes, this argument because vaccinations have been shown to be the most effective means of dealing with viral outbreaks. Data. Vaccinated people are less likely to become infected, less likely to infect others, and way less likely to become sick or die. Basic virology. Viruses can only replicate by entering cells and using the cell’s machinery. Vaccines traditionally stop viruses from doing that, thus virus can’t replicate, thus the amount of virus in the environment goes down, thus likelihood of infection and/or mutation goes down. This is basic stuff that scientists have know for decades if not centuries, such as when George Washington had his soldiers inoculated for smallpox. Some vaccines are more susceptible to vaccine development like measles, some are resistant like HIV and some are in the middle like Covid. New vaccine: the mRNA vaccine technology has been researched for decades. Earlier I showed you that long term side effects of vaccines are extremely rare, and that they usually show up within weeks. Covid vaccines have months of use with extraordinarily rare side effects. The benefit of vaccination far outweighs any supposed risk. And if you want a more “traditional” vaccine the J&J is there. These are the facts. Why do you insist on being so stubborn and not accept them? Saying you want to be free in red states really means you want to play Russian roulette with people’s lives. But then I guess when you die that’s the ultimate freedom. What specifically is so new that you are worried? I think I can alleviate your concern if you could express your apprehension.

It would be ideal if everyone would band together, care about their neighbor, and do what they can to get through the pandemic. But unfortunately it has become political for some dumb reason. Vaccine mandates are not new in any way. Should we now say forget measles vaccines and such?

Bills 27, Fish 16. Josh feasts on the Fish again. But I am worried about our O line in that heat.

Thank God they got him help in time.

In my first response to you I indicated Biden was wrong to do so.

Doctorate in Anatomy. Over 40 peer reviewed publications. Serve on an FDA advisory panel. Have had NIH funded research grants. Run several clinical labs. But you think you know more about science. A little surprised at the FDA vote on boosters, but it shows they evaluate data and make decisions based on science. Looks like they will approve a booster under EUA for those 65 and older.

Stop as in bring under control such that we do not need mitigation strategies like masks. It is clear that Covid is a different creature than say smallpox; we won’t get rid of it. I want it to be like the flu, get a booster every year, test in areas where there are outbreaks and have infected people isolate to prevent spread.

We have to hope Dawkins gets healthier but it takes a while to get over Covid. Williams had a bad game but that should be an aberration. But the interior? Hayward is a beast, true, but those guys have to step up. Otherwise we might need to get the 7th round rookie and Bates in there and see if there’s an upgrade to be had.

Because the red state governors are not following science. They are pandering. DeSantis wouldn’t need all the Regeneron if he focused on prevention in the first place. And we knew way before DeSantis started touting it that Regeneron was an effective treatment. I know folks at Eli Lilly who worked on it early on. I believe in mandated vaccines because it is the medically rational thing to do in order to control the pandemic. I have already commented on wanting more studies if natural immunity. As for Fauci, he is the world expert in infectious diseases, but he is not making decisions on his own. The CDC and FDA and thousands of dedicated scientists around the globe are working on this. As data comes in, recommendations follow. And despite all the hand wringing over long term side effects and such, medical treatments are based on benefit:risk ratio, and the benefits of vaccination far outweigh any risk. Outweighs it by miles and miles. Your last comment makes clear you’re not really interested in stopping this thing, and that you want to make it all about politics. You think those who want to fight are interested in living their lives and people like me who want to beat this thing are not. Frankly, your contention is ridiculous. Everyone wants to get back to normal, but your view will unnecessarily cause more death.

Thanks for clarifying. As for your red state comments, the data is pretty clear. Get people vaccinated and for those that cannot be vaccinated yet masks. I outlined this above. If every governor in every state was truly invested in making the best decisions to keep schools and businesses open and functional, based on available evidence, they’d be aggressive in educating their populations on what the science says. Rather, they are treating it as a political vs. a health issue and hiding behind individual choice, and ignoring that this is a public crisis that demands we all do our part. Here’s where I think we disagree. If you put 100 epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists in a room and asked for their scientific judgement on vaccines and masks, I would estimate that 95 of them minimum would take the affirmative position on both. You seem to imply because 5 of them differ their opinion should hold equal weight. That is not how scientific or medical treatments or advances work.

The division is already there.

I was going to say the same. I’m impressed by Scott.

You have to wait until the mandates are actually in place before you can see their effect.

I would refute your points but it is clear you have neither the education or willingness to understand anything scientific.

Quoting far right wing stuff as always. When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The mandate for federal workers goes into effect September30. OSHA has to still write the directive for companies with over 100 employees.

I’ll take each in turn, but before I do I will state that science is rarely black and white. Science looks at data and arrives at consensus based on the data. It is not uncommon for scientists to debate on the meaning of specific data sets. Unfortunately, there are way too many people in our country that are ignorant, willfully or otherwise, about how science works and how theories and therapeutic approaches change as data is obtained. 1. Boosters: Biden announced that prematurely and was wrong to do so until the FDA thoroughly reviewed the data. They are doing so today. Some data especially from Israel suggest that boosters can be very effective especially in older individuals. 2. Natural vs. vaccine induced immunity. This needs to be studied further. Studies should be done as to how long immunity lasts in both groups, what antibody titers are developed by each and such. There are clearly some that get repeated Covid infections and some that do so after immunization. We need data on percentages of each and severity of each. 3. Masks: I am currently looking through a Medline search I did using the search terms Covid and masks. Over 2000 references came up. In reviewing the first 200 there are about 20 or so that show observational or laboratory data on mask effectiveness, plus several meta-analyses of mask studies. The vast majority (over 90%) show a mitigating effect of masks, helping prevent spread of aerosols or droplets which are the main source of transmission. Thus the preponderance of the evidence shows masks are helpful and it is far past time to quit arguing about it. 4. Masking children: I was in the camp of not doing so until the delta variant. The delta variant is much more infectious and many more children are being hospitalized now. The data suggest mortality rates in kids with delta is still low, due in part to their age and to advances in treatment strategies. The only protection kids under the age of 12 have is masks. My opinion: teachers and other school personnel should be required to be vaccinated, kids 12and up should be vaccinated. Kids should be in school with their friends learning and should be masked or not based on the local data such as vaccination status in a given community. Anecdotally, I talk to kids and they have less problems wearing masks that some parents, who use their children as political pawns to push an agenda. You ask which science is right, as if it can only be one way of the other. I’ll put this as kindly as I can; it shows you don’t understand the nature of science and research. The people fighting this have made it their life’s work to battle infectious disease. I am proud to know many of them. And our country and the world would be way better off banding together and following the science, rather that diving down conspiracy laden rabbit holes.

The public was given a chance to be responsible. Too many chose to be idiots.

No a scientist with 40 years experience in research, clinical care, and who sits on an actual FDA advisory panel. Folks like you who have turned a public health crisis into a political football have killed people.

You can use a historical control group of what the incidence of different conditions was prior to Covid and vaccinations. Now, as to long term effects: Historically the incidence of "long term" effects pf vaccines shows very, very minimal effects seen. The two that are most mentioned are Guillan-Barre syndrome and one time when there was something with polio. As for the GB events, GB syndrome is associated with viral infections and studies show that vaccination might raise the incidence by 1-2 cases per million vaccinations. The polio one was where a non-attenuated or inactivated virus got put into the vaccine pool. These kinds of adverse events were found within weeks, not years. The history of vaccination is clear in that there are no side effects seen years and years down the road. The Covid vaccines have been out there for months now and billi0ns delivered around the world. That data, as well as the clinical studies data done to get EUA and for Pfizer FDA approval, show minimal serious adverse effects, the most prominent the myocarditis and blood clots issues. That these very rare events (on the order of a handful per million vaccinations) were picked up shows the robustness of the monitoring systems used for the Covid vaccines. I know you will bring up the VAERS reporting system, so let's put that to bed now. The VAERS system is a voluntary reporting system where anyone who has received a vaccine can post a side effect. As for deaths, health care providers have to report any deaths from anyone who has received any sort of vaccination. With respect to Covid, they are reported (And one wonders whether false reports are filed by anti-vax individuals), and these reports then are required to have follow up by the CDC and FDA where case reports, death certificates and such are analyzed. When that follow-up has been done, there are extremely rare cases where it appears the vaccine may have directly contibuted to death. So bottom line is this: there is no data to support either the claim that there are long term side effects of the vaccines, nor is there data to support the contention that so many people are dying from vaccination. That is the science, that is the data, that is not the conspiracy nonsense being thrown around on social media.

Nah. You just learn to ignore the Chicken Littles who want to cut or fire everyone after a loss.

I work at the same. The issue is simple: get vaccinated to enter the stadium. If not, sell or give back your tickets.

I was gong to respond to the VAERS stuff but you have done so brlliantly here. I would add two things. One is that the FDA and the CDC are required to do follow-up on every one of the patients submitted via VAERS, and when they do they find the vast, vast majority of deaths are not due to the vaccine. Second, VAERS is voluntary and anyone can add some to the list, which some feel may include anti-vaxers who want to try and inflate numbers for their own purposes.

Pittsburgh played a helluva game on defense. Tip your hat to them.