[Interviewer:] Some parents are still feeling that last little bit of nervousness, like, well, I’m going to be vaccinated, my parents are going to be vaccinated, but my kid isn’t vaccinated and I don’t know when they’re going to get vaccinated.
[Prof. Oster:]The big goal of vaccines is to reduce serious illness and death. That’s what we’re trying to produce with our vaccination. The vaccines we have take a huge risk of hospitalization and death for older adults and reduce it by 85, 95%. Just really big reductions in risk.
The thing is that your 9- or 10-year-old is already basically a vaccinated adult from that standpoint. I mean, it’s true. If you think about the reduction in hospitalization or death risk from being 10, rather than being 80, it’s 99.9%, 98%. It’s actually better than the Pfizer vaccine. I’m hoping that may be a helpful way for people to think about the relative risk for kids, because I think we’ve gotten to this space where it’s like, OK, well, until my kids are vaccinated, I can’t let them out. You’re letting the grandparents out. Let your kids out.
Which part of that did you find particularly moronic? When you add back the significant qualifier that you chose to omit from what you posted, the sentence the quotation is from seems to be correct.
That’s true from a risk to that kid point of view, but letting the unvaccinated kids out is more dangerous to other people than letting the vaccinated grandparents out, right?
So, they may have been right up until the conclusion, but still, conclusion was wrong.
Right, I don’t think anyone disagrees that the kids are highly unlikely to drop dead from COVID, but they’re still able to spread it to vulnerable people, no?
I had it super easy for quarantine and, although I’m not that young, I’m very healthy and not generally at risk, and I hadn’t been that anxious about vaccination until recently, but I’m very happy to have gotten it.
To alleviate any vaccinated guilt, I’m going to donate to something like this:
Told you guys that the Biden people would figure out how to exponentially accelerate the vaccination process. This was manufacturing and distributing a physical product. If there is one single goddamn thing this species can do well in 2021 it’s that. Nothing about this process was even all that hard. Complex, sure, but already solved and at crazy scale.
What needed to happen was for there not to be a fucking crime family trying to collect rent through extortion from every step of the process. This kind of thing has a lot of moving parts and requires a lot of specialists making good decisions in real time. The Trump style of micromanaging ‘let them wait’ idiocy simply breaks something this big. As soon as the experts were allowed to unfuck it they were able to start laying pipe good and fast.
When this is all over I genuinely think Donald Trump will have been the direct cause of 85% of the US’s total death total. Like if you laid out an EV pie chart of who caused all of the deaths in this pandemic he’s got 85% of the entire pie. It’s insane.
Most places are going to make you wait around for 15-30 minutes to make sure you don’t have a reaction, and if you do they are standing by to help you.
Based on my highly superficial and unscientific assessment of the situation, I have developed Melkerson’s COVID paradox*.
The places (especially within the US, but also holds true for places outside) that were the absolute worst at containing the spread were the worst place to be from a COVID standpoint last year. However, they have now become the best places to be from a COVID standpoint because just about anyone can get a vaccine with relative ease in those exact places. Inverse is also true (better at containing covid > harder to get vaccine now).
Most of these places (in the US anyway) will go back to being shitholes in a couple of months.
Germany is facing a “massive” third wave of Covid-19 infections, according to Prof Tobias Kurth, an epidemiologist at Berlin university hospital Charite-Universitatsmedizin.
He tells BBC World News measures were relaxed too early before the vaccination programme had time to take effect.
There has been an “exponential” rise in cases over recent days, Prof Kurth says.
“It’s expected to continue to rise so unfortunately we are facing a third wave which will be quite massive,” he says.
Given the tfact that 76 million americans have gotten the shot so far and there have been precisely zero allergic reaction deaths, I’m going with this is not a thing. Some of those 76 million americans had bee allergies, statistically.
There are 20 appointments available this evening and even more available tomorrow at a rite aid 30 minutes from my house. It’s not my turn yet in WA but it’s very tempting to say I’m a childcare worker or something and go get…
It’s the new American dream - a life saving vaccine programme without the means, interest or demand to roll out on age / most likely to die basis so I say go for it!
Yea probably will do that. Just frustrating to see so many appointments available. It’s rural and heavily Republican area so I’m assuming that’s why there are so many available.
Like I’d just tell her the WORST case scenario (I think?) is she goes into anaphylactic shock but they are literally standing right there with epi pens.
I get it, i was a little concerned about allergic reaction because I’m severely allergic to a lot of random shit like pomegranates. But having them tell me to wait around in case I had a reaction put me at ease.
