And he just doesn't fucking get it. I couldn't get past the first 30 seconds. The hospitals are already near overwhelmed as it is, as we are seeing new records. Very soon it won't be people dying of Covid, it'll be people dying of car crashes, or burst appendixes. What the fuck does "treating us like we're old diabetics" have to do with anything that is going on right now? NOTHING. But he thinks it does, and that speaks volumes.
Had you made it past 30 seconds, he does address that. Mainly that 400ish hospital beds for a province of eight million is the bigger problem, and that if you’re unvaccinated and sick you should be denied service. The “95 year old diabetics” line is because, in terms of critical illness and death, the stats show it’s overwhelmingly the elderly with comorbidities in the most danger. (He also explains that)
Ha. Amidst skyrocketing cases, Ontario is both delaying school reopening, cutting access to testing AND reducing days you must isolate. So the situation has never been worse, and the plan is to test less, isolate shorter but it’s not safe for students. Got it. Tell me this is the government without telling me it’s the government.
This is the government trying to deal with people that are fed up and won't fucking listen to common sense. This is the government trying to compromise with people that won't or don't want to do the smart thing. The publicly funded PCR testing is being reduced to those high risk individuals or those people that have contact with them. They are not testing less, they are targeting those who need the test the most due to limited supplies and lab throughput. And the delay in going back to school is until Jan 5th. That's 2 whole days later, so they can get a few more safety measures in place, like upgraded masks. Because the fear now is that this fucker has become even more contagious as an aerosol... so better filtering and better fitting masks are being recommended, not just the typical sloppy ones being used so far by most people. But that's not the issue. It's not about people dying. People don't seem to get that as much as it sucks now, the more it spreads, the more variants there will be, and the more long term damage there will be. It's not just about deaths. And it's spreading crazy fast right now, and our numbers are reduced do to ineffective testing, and are probably 6-10 days late based on the info I have. Never mind that nobody seems to be understanding that the medical staff out there are on their last legs... and they are about to say "fuck this".
https://www.cp24.com/news/ontario-s...00-new-covid-19-cases-8-more-deaths-1.5723231 The rates of new cases are breaking records daily.
So is there going to be another crack at these mRNA vaccines? I though the ease and speed of programing was supposed to be one of the main benefits of the technology? Too fast evolving variants? Too slow approval?
I'm not sure what you're asking exactly. If you're asking if there will be another mRNA vaccine that specifically targets a new variant, or at least more comprehensively immunizes against it, the answer is "almost certainly." But there have been 5 major variants identified in <12 months. The time required to identify the new variant, research the vaccine's effectiveness against it, identify new sequences that work better, test it, trial it, manufacture it and distribute it is just not practical. Even if the approval processes were meaningfully streamlined over and above the emergency use approval process, it's still a crazy amount of work and the logistics are insane. It's easy to stick new sequences into mRNA vaccines, but the research to identify the most effective sequences and then the logistics of getting it from the science lab into someone's arm is pretty challenging.
You keep bringing this issue up, and I'm just wondering what you're plan to resolve it in the middle of a pandemic is? It still takes several years to train doctors and nurses. Creating more wings of hospitals will also take many many years and cost billions of dollars. It also completely ignores that (at least in the states) that nurses are quitting like crazy because they're burnt out. Restrictions are needed to help the hospitals out, get them through this without collapsing, and in the states we're not doing jack shit about it. In my area we aren't even able to have testing centers this time around because the hospitals don't have the staffing for it. I don't know how Canada's medical practice works, but the idea of refusing service to the unvaccinated is illegal in the US. It's not an option, and ignores that the Omicron variant is breaking through the vaccinated. Which was a concern from the beginning. That we wouldn't get enough people vaccinated and that variants would crop up that the vaccines aren't as effective against. It's like you live in this dream world that we can just go on as normal and there won't be horrible consequences. So sorry a world wide pandemic has made your life inconvenient, but we're trying to protect people (including kids that can't get vaccinated yet). You don't seem to care, but if either of my grandmas get a breakthrough case I'm going to be furious. Every year I get to spend with them is important to me. But apparently if they go 5, 10, 15 years earlier than they would have it's an acceptable loss to you. Fuck that.
I was reading a few days ago about a potentially new vaccine using mRNA that targets the "core" or "non variating" parts of Covid with excellent success. I have zero understanding of the details, but the way it was explained in the article was that there are some parts of Covid that mutate, and some that do not. This new vaccine targets the part that does not, so that if/when it mutates, the vaccine doesn't give a shit. It was also stable at a relatively high temp (like, 5°C or so), so it could be easily transported and stored. You can read some very interesting stuff here to get a glimpse into the shit-ton of research that is ongoing: https://www.nature.com/subjects/vaccines Never mind the huge advances towards other non-Covid things, like HIV.
that kinda gets to something I've been wondering about... I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility to believe there will eventually be a vaccine that makes people immune to this. Not just "you're not gonna die," but like "get the shot and you won't get it." The question is then, if something comes out where it's basically like take and it's 100%, will the majority of people actually still take it?
CoVID all over the place around here. In-laws, friends, friends of friends getting it and it’s running through whole families, both vaccinated and unvaccinated. My sister works in a local hospital and their ICU is maxed out.
I wasn’t bringing up the 400 per 8 mil stat myself, I was saying what Firas said in his video because Nett hadn’t watched it and made a reference about it. John F Kennedy issued a challenge and within a decade the US was on the moon. Don’t tell me that with a fixed goal, experts and assets we couldn’t have significantly overhauled our health system over a 3-4 year period; particularly when we found 600 million to have an election that wasn’t required for three more years and changed almost no seats in the government. My problem is that, objectively speaking, it looks like nothing we’ve done has helped one damn bit. Infection rates are now breaking records. Nett pointed out that over 2/3 of hospitalizations are the fully vaccinated (so remind me again why the unvaccinated are vilified?), a HUGE chunk of small businesses are bankrupt and Pharma has used public money and blanket indemnification to shatter records. At least in Canada, the public has done everything it’s been asked. There’s a tiny minority of protestors, but the vast majority mask 100% of the time in all public areas, social distance as instructed and vaccinated as soon as they could. And it has changed nothing, and now we’re pissed off at the people pointing it out. From the data I see, the only tool that seems to reduce rates is full scale lockdowns. As in, lock down as hard as we did in March of 2020. Which is completely untenable and devastating to the economy. So yeah. I have zero faith that the politicians know how to fix this, and I fully support people deciding to get on with their lives and accept the risk of being exposed. After two years - and being in virtually the same spot after all the money and all the effort - it’s not unreasonable.
BECAUSE THEY ARE MORONS. And because like everything else, those numbers have context... ICU vs non-ICU, staffing, etc. They are vilified because they cause undo hardships on the health care system. I just don't know how to discuss this with you. Your arguments have a weird overly-simplistic take on shit. And if you think that things are bad now, just imagine what it would have been like if the politicians ACTUALLY did nothing about it for the last 1.8 years. We managed to become one of the first countries who are as vaccinated as we are, and that took a lot of doing. We didn't have access to sanitizer or masks when it all started. We are now becoming more and more self-sufficient in PPE, etc, as per the hard lessons that have been learned so far. "Simple" things like unified data reporting didn't exist before this started. I know this first hand, as we had teams calling up individual hospitals to talk to "Pam" so she could read some numbers they jotted down at the nurse's station as shit was happening, so we could provide even simplistic numbers to the politicians and scientists so they could try and make an informed decision. Do you honestly think that tens of thousands of people in the government have just been sitting on their asses doing nothing? For real? They've been fighting a hell of a battle just to keep from drowning. Don't get me wrong, there's a shit-ton of the government that is wrong and broken, but your stance that they've failed us specifically in this pandemic I think is a bit over the top. I think that, even in hindsight, they made mostly the right calls at the right times.
My roommate told me yesterday that he tested positive for covid. He was vaccinated, but not boosted. He was also pretty sure that he already had covid in 2020. I got my booster at the beginning of November (J&J for both shots). I am not sure if I previously had covid, but if I had a symptomatic case then it was in February 2020. I saw an article yesterday that said that the J&J vaccine appears to be effective at preventing hospitalizations from omicron if 2 doses have been given, but most of what I have read has still said that J&J is not very effective at fighting omicron. I don't have symptoms at the moment, but I am still a little worried.
Here in the States, at least my section of it, it's NOT the "tiny minority" that are resisting. They are openly defying mask mandates as though it were a badge of courage to be seen in public without one. I should be counting the times I get weird or dirty looks from fat, out of shape old people because I have a mask on TO PROTECT THEM! 9/10 of these self styled William Wallaces are the same ones refusing the vaccine and jerking each other off online about "muh rights." In turn, we're left with skyrocketing numbers of infections, both breakthrough and otherwise. And guess who will be the ones whining the loudest if, God forbid, the hospitals have to resort to triaging who gets what treatment, if any. You think medical staff is worn thin now? Wait til they have to start doing that. I've been there, it fucking sucks. That's not to say the government has been completely competent throughout this whole thing. But a lot of it rests on "we the people", who are a bunch of fucking retards anymore.
I can't speak for the Canadian system, it should be easier to make changes to a nationalized healthcare system. You would still need to train the new staff and build the facilities. As you pointed out that would take 3-4 years (longer for doctors, but you could work around that with NPs and PAs). That doesn't solve any of the issues we are facing right now. It would also require a hefty increase in taxes. The American system can not be changed that quickly. In my region alone there are 4 major hospital systems. Getting a system like that changed requires years of policy and regulation changes, because these are for profit businesses. Again, that doesn't help anyone right now. Frankly, there should be stricter lock downs going on right now, and your view is that they're untenable. You just posted a video from a guy criticizing greater restrictions, but those restrictions will help reduce the number of infections and hopefully hospitalization. You know what would also be devastating to the economy? If the hospital system collapses. You think you're going to have a robust economy when dead bodies are piling up? Also, what Nett said isn't true in the states. There are plenty of vaccinated people catching COVID, but the vast majority of the hospitalizations are from unvaccinated people. What the states are lacking is testing. We have not spun up the centralized testing centers again, because we don't have the staff to run them. After two years we're in the same state because governments weren't willing to do enough at the beginning to get it in check, and the world we live in today means that we need to have global policy and action to combat this. At this point we're just trying to survive it, and what you want would make it much more difficult to do that. You have your view and I know I'm not changing your mind, but your frankly just wrong about so much of this. I suggest seeking out some people who work in hospitals and talking to them about this. Maybe that will give you a different perspective about how this is all going.
Numbers are very contextual, and can usually be cherry picked to fit any narrative. You are correct... in Ontario (the numbers I was referring to... let's not even start in on Alberta), in the numbers reported in that article I posted, 2/3 of ALL hospitalizations are vaccinated people, but (unreported in that article) numbers show that over 85% of the ICUs are filled with unvaccinated people. That's what I meant when I said context matters, not just the numbers. So the unvaxxed are having a huge impact on our hospitals, disproportionately so compared to their 1/3 total number.
this We're all wearing masks out now, wherever we go, and even then that's very limited. Basically cutting trips outside the house to only necessary things. But where we go, my family is in the super small minority of people wearing masks. On the bright side, there's been large numbers of people getting boosters lately, to the point where it's no longer walk in availability. Also at home testing kits are laughable difficult to find, though I believe that could be due to a number of factors. It basically comes down to the sad fact that the majority of people are not willing to protect others if it means any small measure if inconvenience to themselves.