Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Sweden is top 5 in European vaccination rates. And after an initial disaster, when the Swedish equivalent to the CDC suggested everyone possible to work from home, Stockholm became the leading EU city with nearly a 50% WFH rate. Sweden is also the leader in single occupancy homes with about 47% of Swedes living alone, and an average of only 2.1 persons per household. The US has about 2.4 persons per household.

As for schools reopening, must be nice to have perfect foresight to know which studies to ignore and which are accurate! If we have a little hindsight back to the Fall of 2020, there were competing studies that showed different effects of keeping schools open. I linked the Israeli study showing a huge outbreak, and this study from early 2021 looking at 2020 data shows things are a bit all over the map. No real discernable pattern, but what looks like a correlation between having schools open and a higher incidence of COVID outbreaks. is the best conclusion the authors could come up with.

Were mistakes made by health officials during COVID? Yes. Were some schools closed too long? Yes. But when you are dealing with a communicable disease that killed millions worldwide, until you have definitive data, you can't blame people for erring on the side of caution. Especially when dealing with a group of people where likely 50% of them or more have a comorbidity that makes COVID more dangerous. Remember, about 1 in 3 teachers are 50 or older, and add in all the asthmatics, diabetics, etc., and I'm guessing the teacher population with at least one comorbidity is at least half.

But none of this matters if you have perfect foresight and know the answers before the actual scientists do! Of course, nobody has this ability, including 95, who still believes the vaccine causes myocarditis at higher rates than infection. He'll link the one study, based on VAERS data, and ignore all the subsequent studies, with more accurate data, that show infection is far more dangerous in rate and severity.

Last, the vaccine was certainly fast-tracked. But it wasn't rushed. The vaccine went through all the same CDC trial measures as any new drug. Fortunately, all the inert ingredients in the vaccine were tested before in 2013. That data was accepted for the COVID vaccine, which shaved 12 to 18 months off of testing. All that was left to test was the actual mRNA effects in the vaccine. The CDC conducted 3 trials, increasing in size, which is standard operating procedure. After three, the CDC can either make a decision, or do a 4th. All the data after 3rd showed no reason for a 4th, and the vaccine was approved for emergency use.

Yes, the results were fast-tracked. Usually the CDC has other trial data to look at, and a completed drug trial usually takes the CDC several months before they can confirm the trial data. But in the case of the COVID vaccine, the data was given top priority and moved to the front of the line. This too shaved months off the approval. But didn't change the outcome one iota. The data is the data, and would be the same data if the CDC looked at it one day after a trial finished as it were 1 year after the end of the trial.

 

Sweden reduced its excess mortality via vaccination. Many other countries increased their excess mortality via vaccination.

 

No idea what this posts means nor how it relates to what I said.

 

1. Who cares
2. This was Jan 2022 and only one month into Omicron.

While I certainly disagree with the answers at some level I understand the sentiments.

 

RFK Jr has been an antivaxxer for decades. He’s a flake.

So why is it republicans were far more unvaccinated? If it was a poor risk rewards then party shouldn’t have anything to do with it.

It basically went like this for those republicans

- Trump is God
- Fauci started disagreeing with Trump
- Fauci = bad
- vaccines, masks anything Fauci and the libs say or recommend = bad.

 

Good to know...

 

Trump was pro-vax back in 2021 and, lest we forget, he actually takes credit for the vaccine. As far as I know he's actually still pro-vax. Yep, looks like he still is and he's losing support over it. Donald Trump supporters turn on him over vaccine defense—"Sold out so hard"

As far as risk vs reward, I think there's a fairly large number of people who just aren't that worried about Covid. I know of at least two people who got the shot primarily because it made for less red tape when travelling overseas. Covid wasn't really the issue for either of them. How many other people got the shot just to keep their jobs?

 

So why were/are Republicans so much more worried about the safety of the vaccine than democrats?

 

LOL, you can't really believe if trump hadn't lost that any lefties would have come within 100 yards of a covid vaccine.

 

Oh I totally believe that. And I suspect more republicans would have gotten vaxxed.

 

Over 20% of Republicans wanted the unvaccinated sent to quarantine camps. How about that

 

I don't know. The thing is Desantis had/has a ton of credibility with Republicans on the Covid question and he was pro-vax. Kristi Noem also had a lot of credibility with Republicans, on Covid, and also was pro-vax. It might be an anti-Democrat thing but it might just be, as I said earlier, lack of concern over Covid. If someone views Covid as a low risk then why would they take an unknown risk on a vaccine?

 

Desantis has now turned anti vax.

You initially asked a question and I tried to answer it. I’m not going to debate people’s rationalizations for doing stupid stuff like not getting vaccinated.

 

Scary shit.

 

You blame the unvaccinated for tens of thousands of extra deaths.
In the US if someone was unvaccinated and they got sick and died that was mostly on them.

Data shows that even though vaccinated one could still get sick, spread the virus and or die. So to blame it on the unvaccinated ignores key facts.

Omicron which was a big part of the second and most severe wave (post vaccines) didn’t come from the US so our vaccination rates had zero to do with Omicron.

One can just as easily blame lock downs on tens of thousands of extra deaths due to missing early diagnosis and treatment of numerous diseases.
Lots of causes out there.

 

Prior to Omicron, the unvaccinated were more likely to spread the virus than vaccinated. The result were more deaths. The numbers are impossible to quantify.

There is little doubt that some vaccinated older people died who caught it from unvaccinated. Again no way to quantify.

 

I appreciate you answering my questions earlier. Perhaps I misread you but it didn't seem to me like were just trying to answer questions. I kind of think you were trying to start a debate from your very first, "It's not an argument it's a fact" to your very last "dumb asses". I can understand why you might've taken it differently but I really was just asking for information, at least I was initially.

Edit: that's not to say I absolutely wouldn't have turned it into a debate eventually.

 

I appreciate the discussion. I mostly avoid this thread because it is just repetitive. My reaction was to the post and poster who posted a video of all the mean liberals who were condemning the unvaxxed. My point is at the time they were being condemned, I totally agreed with it.

What anti vaxers and apologists have done is tried to apply the state of things now under omicron back to the situation before omicron. At this point, the need to convince the unconvinceable has diminished because omicron tends to spread regardless of vaccination. Prior to omicron vaccination did reduce the spread, at least somewhat.

 

“But Trump!” is getting tiresome.

Trump gave voice to Fauci and Birx.

Trump rubber stamped lockdowns.

Trump was the Father of Vaccines.

 

See how vaccines in highly compliant Denmark shut down dying ? Oh wait …