We’ll see if you make fun of the cops once you’re robbed and you need somebody to show up four hours after calling them to roll their eyes at you. Maybe they should just fucking comply, which their excuse for anybody who is maimed or dies by their hand. I love it how, once again, this particular profession demands to have it both ways.
I'm curious how it plays out, because it's one of the professions that has a strong union. I've said from the start that I wouldn't be surprised if the unions go to bat and fight against mandated anything. We're looking at probably 3-5 years of these kind of talks, as each particular union has to re-negotiate their collective bargains. Even if the union leadership agrees in principle with the mandate, I wouldn't be surprised if they use it as a tactic and a political tool to force more concessions from the city/employer/etc.
The union argument is that the vaccine is changing the terms of employment. Depending on how it's actually written (ie, if the requirements are spelled out in terms of MMR vaccine, flu shot every year, etc.), or if it's just "compliance with public health measures, including vaccines. That said, the virus being the biggest cop-killer in 2020 paints things in a different light. If the unions fight it on the terms of employment grounds, I could see some places adjusting based on healthcare costs or insurance, etc. I think the election will signal how strict Biden will be with the vaccine mandate. Also, the math has to include how costly/long it will be to fight the inevitable lawsuits. The timeframe (January) is part of it: too aggressive for tons of negotiations. The unions might not be able to drag it out. Would an insurance company be able to cancel coverage for someone refusing to get the vaccine? That might be an interesting parameter.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/11/what-americas-covid-goal-now/620572 Sigh. “We need to come to some sort of agreement as to what it is we're trying to prevent,” says Céline Gounder, an infectious-disease expert at New York University. “Are we trying to prevent hospitalization? Are we trying to prevent death? Are we trying to prevent transmission?” Different goals would require prioritizing different strategies. The booster-shot rollout has been roiled with confusion for this precise reason: The goal kept shifting."
GF's mom is now in the ICU. We asked her son how old his GF's mom is and got the typical teenager answer of "Old"
The whole idea of mandates is going to be fucked with boosters. If the vax wears off enough that boosters are required and made a requirement to be considered fully vaxxed (like Israel)? You can forget about mandates in this country. We are still struggling in the 50% range for fully vaxxed of the initial jab. The diminishing returns on follow up boosters will make mandates meaningless in short order.
Mayo Clinic and CDC still have fully vaxxed at 59%. Of course they are counting the whole of the US, it appears the White House is just referring to "adults." Only 10% have gotten a booster so far. My point still stands, baring some Omega strain with a terrifying death rate, we wont be changing the fully vaxxed definition to people with boosters. The mandates would become unworkable in a bureaucratic and, obviously, a political sense.
I think what we will eventually see is the annual flu shot also have a Covid booster in it. It’ll be an annual one and done so most people will be okay. You’ll have deaths from Covid as always, but it will become more manageable.
That's like saying "we'll put diesel in our gasoline". From a technical standpoing, afaik, a combined shot isn't feasible. As this gets endemic, it's a whole different conversation. I'm leery of criticizing the pandemic response from the lens of hindsight and "well, that didn't work, so why should we do x or listen to y" kind of shit. The conversation around "how much do we invest in stopping/slowing this virus?" scares the fuck out of me, because it's going from "end it" to "live with it and manage it". At a time when a virus is politicized, the people in charge of making these decisions might not have my best interests at heart. I would frame it around: "what can we get people to consistently do?, what is our playbook when there's an outbreak here and how do we keep our healthcare systems afloat?" I would bet beloved parts of my anatomy that's not the tone of the conversation in some of the places where this is being decided.
This is the heart of it, I think. Covid has shown this generation what we already knew; long-term, daily inconveniences are not sustainable unless there's a serious, direct threat. Asking people to wear masks for 2-3 years, not have any holidays with other people for years and inhibiting travel, work, etc is a stop-gap solution and once people get fed up, they'll act as they wish. In some cases in defiance of the government, and then you've really got a problem. I think a wiser choice in all of this is to approach it with the intent that you won't eradicate it. At least not for decades. So take the last two years and the next two years to restructure the healthcare system. PSWs and nurses get paid more and a hiring blitz so that they aren't on skeleton crews (like they've been for decades). Get all hospital staff cross-trained in respiratory emergency care, so if an area has an outbreak they have a bigger emergency pool to draw from. Permanently increase ICU beds in a manner that doesn't put the staff from 98% capacity to 125% capacity. Continuously refine the injections and stop with the media bullshit that if you just get vaxxed, this will be over. In Canada, don't call for stupid policies that cost millions (the election) when that money could be spent on healthcare. Insist that the media dial down the "us and them" rhetoric, because it's not helping move the needle on the people who are vaccine hesitant. My $0.02. We have to switch to "how do we live with this without an uprising or a schism that creates a caste system."
A Harvard biostatistician breaks down the CDC study purporting the vaccines offer superior immunity vs the Israeli study that says Covid recovered is superior: https://brownstone.org/articles/a-review-and-autopsy-of-two-covid-immunity-studies/
That author has some pretty strong biases that make me suspect his analysis of the two studies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kulldorff see the section on Covid on his wiki article. He raises some interesting points, but like the discussion several pages back, it's one thing to be able to read and comprehend his points about the studies but it's another level of expertise to suss out whether his conclusions are appropriate. Is there anyone else that has this type of clinical study and statistical background that draws the same conclusions?
A combined flu/COVID shot is already in the works. How effective it may be remains to be seen. https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coron...gle-dose-covid-19-flu-combo-vaccine-1.5578445
I have a very different takeaway, and that's "some people will not accept a minor inconvenience to protect themselves or others" and it's disheartening. I don't think you can set the bar at "we won't eradicate it for years"....it's too dangerous to make no effort in that direction. It's a multiple-front kind of effort. What you're talking about is what we're working on in resilience. How can we build some "slack" into the systems so that they're not so easily overwhelmed and disrupted. There are no easy answers here, and the group of folks making these decisions might by slightly better than the last, but it's a narrow margin.
I suppose it depends on how you qualify "minor." In Canada, for the first month, there was virtually 100% compliance. It was like the week between Christmas and New Years, x10. NO ONE left their house. Everyone queued (when they had to) at a great distance, companies immediately shut down their sites and switched to remote, etc. Do we call the third year of masks, social distancing and (apparently) vaccines having no effect on Covid procedures a "minor inconvenience"? I don't. People are pushing back at this becoming a systemic thing. And at the goalpost constantly moving. I think, if you're being realistic, yeah. It's gonna take years. Even in a perfect world where you could get 100% vaccine compliance within your own country, and somehow also convince them to take boosters every six months...what about all the other countries? We haven't even skimmed the surface of the developing world. We (mostly) have open borders and free trade. You cannot geographically isolate, and the rest of the world isn't going to get their arms around this thing any time soon. Have you seen any realistic data models that show the global population eradicating this thing withing a year that don't involve unrealistic expectations of behaviour or draconian state measures? Genuinely curious, because I can't imagine a solution we could implement. If they tried the shit in the US or Canada that they're doing in Australia, I 100% hope that people riot in the streets. That degree of restriction for a disease the kills less than 1% of the people who are infected (and a predictable demographic, at that), is unwarranted.