I wonder how many healthcare employers will force the vaccine as a condition of employment, similar to how many require flu shots and other vaccinations?
With approval coming from MHRA (UK) and likely very soon FDA, HC, and some EU authorities, I’ll feel pretty comfortable taking it myself. Especially if one of HC and/or BfArM (Germany) approves it.
Man it is so spooky how we are objectively at the absolute worst point in the pandemic, and yet, I feel like this is just a closely guarded secret that only we know.
I feel almost certain that the vast majority of the population would say that things are much better now than they were in April/May.
It has me wondering whether a pandemic raging through the country that nobody really cares about actually makes a sound.
I agree and I will be taking it as soon as I have access. Some of us said it at the time but naming a national vaccine push Operation Warp Speed was insanely dumb. Continuing to tout how fast it was done rather than the safety of it was dumb. Not that we would have expected anything different from the totally incompetent Trump admin though.
Yeah, I might have some mistrust of the FDA, but less of the UK’s. If Germany or Canada or some other place with trustworthy, competent leadership says it’s cool, then I have basically no doubt, barring pushback from independent scientists or whistleblowers or the like. I won’t be in a rush to get it simply because I’m a guy privileged enough to WFH and smart enough to STFH, so there are a lot of other people who should be ahead of me in line. Obviously that will change if my employer wants me to start traveling again immediately or outright requires vaccination.
This is an interesting paradox that I hadn’t thought about before. We’re obviously at the worst point, but I don’t feel as bad as I did several months ago. I think it’s a combination of 2 things:
I think it’s similar to the surprising finding (I can’t recall where I read this) that people experiencing physical trauma (amputees, maybe? paraplegics) aren’t any less happy than other people once they get past the immediate injury. The idea is that people generally have an inherent level of happiness that persists regardless of their circumstances. The reverse of this would explain why more money doesn’t generally make people happier.
[Edit: The book was Stumbling Upon Happiness, by Dan Gilbert, which is a very good book. However, searching for it just now reveals that maybe the findings with respect to paraplegics aren’t that compelling.]
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this a lot after going home and spending time talking with my mom and brother over Thanksgiving. One of the insidious aspects of this virus is that it is not very visible and so many of the people that get it have mild or no symptoms and they are not subjected to the worst of the effects so they come out the other side thinking that it has been over blown. My brother only had a little congestion and his wife had a fever and lost taste and smell, but was in relatively good shape. He made a couple statements to the effect of, there’s two viruses, we didn’t get the results COVID. Now, he’s not a truther or anything like that, but he has been of the opinion that everyone is overreacting to it and this only affirmed that belief in his mind. And really, I can’t blame him. He helps manage our farm and they have carried on more or less like normal without serious consequences. I think that experience is common and makes public discourse more difficult (on top of the obscene politicization of the issues) and thus makes it even harder to get and maintain the kind of consensus needed for public officials to implement reasonable precautions to combat the spread. I got in a shouting match with he and my mom about it. They were both angry at what they see as ridiculous measures and I’m like “wtf, public officials need to be cautious, hundreds of thousands of people are dying and we aren’t out of the woods yet, even with vaccines looking promising in the near future.” And it just doesn’t penetrate.
My friend in Tahoe has been partying like it’s 1999 since this started and finally got pozzed last week and says it feels like a cold. He’ll definitely be on the side that thinks it wasn’t that bad.
The COVID anti-vax movement is going to be an incredible conclusion to this whole ridiculous shitshow. People are going to be talking about how in the old days you used to throw COVID parties to gain immunity, so I don’t see why we need some newfangled vaccine all of a sudden.
There is a lot of truth there. I think people also have a very poor grasp of probability. I’m pulling these numbers out of my ass but if we have 40% asymptomatic, 50% mildly symptomatic, 9% long haulers or hospitalized but don’t die and 1% die then we end up with a situation where most people who have had it had no consequences (that they know of) and most people that know people who have had Covid had very little consequence. The moronic way to look at that is “it’s not that bad”. The same people if you offered them $10,000 to take a 1% shot of death and a 10% shot of hospitalization/long term consequences would mostly not take the bet. Yet they are taking this gamble to eat indoors and go to church every day.
There is no way to break through to these people and at the end of Covid they will feel justified for living how they did even though it contributed to 500,000 dead Americans or whatever.
My sister, a pharmacist in a hospital, says she doesn’t think she will get a vaccine unless required to. Wtf?!?! WAAF if we can’t convince her.
I get being a little skeptical of the rush, but good lord the risks of a vaccine are dwarfed by those for covid.
The gigantic range of outcomes has always been one of the most terrifying things about COVID. Anything from “no symptoms at all” to “dead within a month”. I wonder how things would have played out differently if we had been hearing directly from experts on a daily basis without the political smoke screen. Maybe we’d have a greater understanding of the nuances of the illness at least.
TS doing his part trying to convince everyone that mRNA vaccines are unsafe. Great stuff as always from the management/mods of 22.
The fact he has not eaten a ban yet is insane. The entire BFI forum has been filled with his mostly wrong nonsense and abusive posting for a very long time. I realize the entire forum is a cesspool but he is one of the worst offenders on there.
Is it crazy to want to read all the studies about the vaccine before I take it? When people ask me if I will take it my answer is most likely but I will want to read the studies first.
I’m also last in line since I’ve already had it.
I ping the BFI mod about this a while back, got no response.
If I had the time and PS skills, I think it would be hilarious to photoshop this photo of Trump’s face onto a picture of the Starship enterprise as it jumps to warp speed, with the light trails and all that.
I think the number will be lower, but jeez y’all would be surprised how difficult it is to get nurses to take freakin flu shots. Our flu shot rates for physicians is 95%+ and for nurses it’s like 65. It’s maddening.
It’s pretty crazy!
I guess, similar to Trump, if you’re extremely confidently wrong a lot of morons will lap it up.