One comment on that article (by username Mark) really sums it up far better than I ever could:
You’re a better man than I am, John. Yes, it’s a bad thing that people are dying. And no, gloating probably isn’t helping.
But what the fuck else are we supposed to be doing here?
We sacrificed a year of our lives in lockdown. We watched loved ones die or saw their health destroyed by long covid. We lost jobs. We lost our lifestyles, our workplaces, our bars and restaurants. We watched our Healthcare system bend, then buckle under the pressure of wave after wave of covid.
And then the vaccines came and we fought for months to get them. We took the hit fom the jabs and suffered the fevers and the pain in the hope that this would be the beginning of a return to normalcy. But it wasn’t.
Here we are, looking at another year or more of covid quarantine because, despite the general availability of the vaccine, idiots are refusing to take it. Their rationales are specious at best and downright insane at worst. They won’t listen to reason, facts, pleas from family or friends. Some die damning covid as a liberal hoax and some desperately beg for the jab once their precious lives are in danger, but at the end if the day what are we supposed to be doing to change their minds? We’ve tried. They won’t. And we’re tired.
We’re tired of their lies, conspiracy theories and illogic. We’re tired of being put at risk every day because they can’t be bothered to do something as trivial as wear a mask to protect their fellow humans. We’re tired of seeing operations canceled and nurses quitting because the unvaccinated are overflowing the ICUs with a completely preventable disease. We just want to get back to normal. And they’re determined to drag this out forever.
So yes, we are enjoying the schadenfreude of watching them die of covid after railing against the vaccines for the last year. What else have we got to enjoy from this last shitty, shitty year? And while it may be horrible that they’re dying, tell me what else were we supposed to have done? You can’t save someone determined to kill themselves. Our only regret is that they’re taking innocents with them.
Which means we can only hope they die faster. And no, that’s not a good thing.
I want to use this strength against them. Tell them they would not take the vaccine because they were afraid. They were afraid of it because they did not understand what a vaccine is, and they are too embarrassed to ask. They are dying in an expensive hospital because they haven’t got the moral courage to point a gun at themselves and pull the trigger…
I suspect it can’t work: their life-strategy seems to block any threat to their world view and a very primitive level. But maybe you can find one of them who saw reason and took the vaccine. Maybe they could do the talking and find the key.
They also all won’t die, thus leaving behind a population of never-diers who can sway the minds of new young people who are coming up. Those who remain only reinforce the mythology.
I guess we could trot out the zombie metaphor again…"'I’m more of a libertarian and I don’t like being told what I have to do." (kill zombies to prevent the spread of zombie-itis).
The commenter from the Ozarks stated that in that city, a lot of vaccinated people were being hospitalized with breakthrough cases of covid. Dunno - here in Argentina the data seems to be like that in other US states - nearly 100% effectiveness against hospitalization.
I wonder whether the anecdotal evidence from small towns in areas with very low vaccination rates and little mitigation suggests that existing vaccines lose effectiveness when the body is subjected to greater viral load, I wonder whether when people get sick enough to go to hospital, that they don’t fib about having gotten the shot.
Here they warn you that some evidence suggests that if you happen to catch covid withing days of getting the 1st dose, that you may get very very ill, so you’re supposed to be vigilant around your date. Could that be in play? I wish we didn’t have to wonder.
Covid vaccines actually have a pretty long shelf life when kept at proper storage temperatures. Better thought out central planning could avoid this and the excess vaccines need to be sent to Africa, Asia, Pacifica and Latin America with no delay.
I think we’ve seen that the no-appointment walk in free for all strategy has not yielded the desired results. So there’s no reason not to return to an appointment system like most countries have - if you’re eligible, you sign up on a webpage or via whatsapp or sms or a special app the government launches about covid health. Then, a day or three later, according to demand, you get a message saying that you can chose a location and date for the following two days, so they know how many doses to send out to those vaccination centers. That way, they only need to send a scant upper margin of extra doses for walk ins who claim that they had issues like ‘couldn’t make my appointment’, ‘waited a week but never got the call’ (common for those who used email as the contact method but didn’t check spam).
I suspect that the US making the vaccine free for all for all so early on caused it to be devalued by many in the population. If, rather, you were not allowed the vaccine until your age group got a window, and if you missed it you’d have to wait a month or more for the next chance, people might be more eager to not lose out.
My idea seems supported by the fact that the lowest age range here currently, 18-24, was of course the last called and when they were, the government quickly announced that that was that and now anyone over 18 could sign up whenever they wanted, and that last group, who never were going to see their window close again, has pitiful numbers - only about 65% got the shot.
When properly stored, they last a good six months (though Pfizer only lasts 31 days after thawing), so disposal of expired doses seems inevitable if it isn’t already happening.
I think that vaccine hesitancy in general is a much bigger problem than people no longer having to rush to get vaccinated to or miss out on their chance.
Man that’s enraging. The flights take up to about 24 hrs end to end, our FDA is able to run QA on a lot in a week or so, and then from there to the vaccine centers is another 24-72 hrs. So, that means that we can put to good use vaccines with a month of shelf life left. I might be missing a step, since getting the US approval for export has always been the main bottleneck up to now, but even still, once the vaccines have only 60 days left, y’all could ship them off. I think that the naturalization of producing tons of waste in every sense is very US thinking, but not inevitable.
It will, and that is both devastating and morally reprehensible.
Researchers were able to draw a straight line between trump rallies last summer and COVID deaths. The same will apply for unvaccinated spreaders. It’s nothing short of depraved indifference.
The reason it’s working in Israel and other countries is because they have made vaccination mandatory. Can’t do that in the US. Gotta be free to endanger yourself and those around you. For christ sake we can’t even get people to wear masks.
Some people are more resilient than others, but even if 75% of all children raised in such an environment follow their parents, that’s still a lot of authoritarians.
Hell, I didn’t even wait when the vaccines rolled out. Got one as soon as I legally could. Everyone I knew was partying like it was 2019, seeing their friends, getting together with everyone, going shopping, and “forgetting” to wear masks. My family and I were in lockdown. I didn’t want to wait any longer to get out of prison.
Nothing is ever that simple is it? People are driven to all kinds of changes by a plethora of unique and personal experiences, right? I think family upbringing can be a factor, but just one of many.
I believe it is. I don’t know what happened to them but London Ontario had 10s of thousands of about to expire doses a few weeks ago. Sticking them on a plane to Australia or Japan and quickly getting them into arms well before officially expired seems easy but I suspect it is not happening.
There are other better places to send excess doses but I really don’t know the status of distribution networks. You would think major cities in most of the world could absorb 10,000 doses without fuss.
I had not foreseen this consequence: it appears that here in bc the vaccine passport or whatever one calls it has spurred more people to get vaccinated. I doubt it would help in areas of widespread distrust but who knows.
Also in BC we saw a huge uptake early on in First Nations and that is a demographic that has every reason for mistrust.
Really glad to see that this is one of the outcomes.
There’s been a lot of noise online according to my wife about this (I had to give up social because of the pandemic) and I’m seeing a lot of businesses “taking a stand against this for the common man”, which is disappointing, but expected.
