“Better” in what way? COVID, at its heart, is a vascular disease that has been known to cause people to throw blood clots. I have had a pulmonary embolism and it sucked. Really, really badly. And due to the vein in my leg being the kind that now likes to repeat its trick, I have to take warfarin every day and get tested. My levels got all out of whack recently and if I were to fall and bump my head there is a significant risk that I could die of intracranial pressure before anyone realized that the seemingly minor goose egg is actually a fatal bit of damage.
This is what “natural immunity” to COVID might lead to. I will be taking warfarin for the rest of my life, just as I’ve been taking it now for almost a decade. I assure you, if anyone told me I could miss having to take warfarin and get tested but have an annual or even twice a year shot instead I would do it…like a shot, as it were.
People arguing about COVID being “mild” are showing their ignorance in a big, big way.
Immunity from covid. Your personal example has zero to do with idea that natural immunity from contracting covid should fulfill immunization requirements.
But your much vaunted natural immunity is nothing of the sort. Acquiring some immunity to one variant does not necessarily apply to another and I dunno about you but I’m smart enough to realize that if I’m going to have to repeat an experience I’d rather it was a vax I choose than getting sick over and over and maybe eventually dying of it. And since you can’t prove you’ve had it or what variant you had your immunity is worthless from the standpoint of deciding whether or not your presence is a danger to me or no. So get your damned vax and stop being so pissy about it–if my eleven year old grandson can manage it I think the putative adults can too.
Yes, the MRNA vaccines aren’t effective against Omicron. And it’s not a “much vaunted” anything. It’s just another variant of immunity just as the different vaccines are all variants.
This is definitely not a given. Studies have conflicting results and they’re not sure why. The only thing that seems universal is that vax + prior infection is better than either alone.
This may be an interesting discussion, but it doesn’t belong in this thread. None of it has anything to do with belligerent COVID patients and how they are frustrating the medical profession.
To everyone, please drop this hijack and feel free to start your own thread on this issue. Thanks.
Edited by Puzzlegal to add:
Note that the hijack discussion about immunity has been moved here:
Actually, those of us with 3x Moderna have the highest level of protection extant according to studies of well over 600K COVID patients.
ETA: It could be argued that this particular hijack is just about a bog standard example of what medical professionals are facing every day. Minus the guns and spitting though.
That’s true some of the time, but I think part of it is the flu denialism that was pervasive in America before Covid, but thankfully seems to have died down a bit.
By “flu denialism” I mean the myth of the “$100 flu”, namely, that if you are not so bedridden that you wouldn’t be able to get out of bed to pick up a free $100 bill in another room, then you just have a cold, not a real flu. The proven existence of some cases of mild or even asymptomatic Covid hopefully will have a knock-on effect in getting the population to admit that there is also mild influenza.
So some people might delay getting tested - sometimes fatally so - because they’re telling themselves “hey, I can still breathe, and can walk around as long as I take it easy, so I can’t really have Covid, since that’s even worse than the flu, and flu sufferers are totally bedridden.”
Jumping in late here. Returning to the original theme of patients attacking health care providers: My SIL works as an ER director in Syracuse NY and when the gang members come in with a wounded brother, or their GF/wife is having childbirth complications like severe bleeding, that person better not die or the doctors get violently threatened and possibly worse. Shot, or stabbed.
I have also read news stories (sorry, no cite) about scenes like this in China. Grieving family members will physically assault the doctor who failed to save their loved one.
I think with these COVID deniers the situation is informed by two factors: first being immediate fear and grief, and the second being their underlying inability to deal with basic facts.
I was recently in the hospital for the same problem, and it made me even more confused about these COVID deniers. My blood oxygen levels bottomed out at about 86% whenever I tried to exercise, which made me think I was going to die - Just getting up to go to the bathroom had me gasping for breath so hard I thought I might collapse and die.
And then I hear about some of these people coming into the ER with oxygen numbers in the 70s or worse, and I’m like, “WTF?!? How can they even function like that? How can they not realize how bad off they are?” At 86%, I was ready to accept any amount of help I was offered, I can’t even imagine trying to argue that “It’s not that bad”.
Right? I kept going into the doctor because I couldn’t walk from the parking lot all the way into work without stopping for breath and that is NOT normal for me. Thing was, I had no typical conditions for PE, not obese, nonsmoker, not on hormone replacement, etc., and the only thing unusual is that I’d recently tackled a major landscaping project which entailed extensive use of a walk behind front loader and moving literally sixteen tons of gravel. Also built a cinderblock retaining wall. Three weeks later I’m gasping for breath after walking fifty feet. We thought it was allergy related until finally my leg swelled up to twice its size and made itself known to all as the culprit. But all during that month I was in my doctor’s office or on the phone a LOT trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with me, I sure as shit wasn’t ignoring it figuring it would somehow just magically go away. My pulse ox was 84 when I hit the ER and they blanched and got me on oxygen right quick. I’m with you on trying to figure out how in hell people can just ignore something so clear cut as NOT BEING ABLE TO BREATHE. You’d think they’d panic but no…evolution took a wrong turn somewhere that a significant percentage of our species is able to rationalize not being able to breathe as somehow NBD.
Hypoxia doesn’t always cause shortness of breath; there have been a lot of stories of COVID patients who came to the hospital with other symptoms and had shockingly low oxygen levels. I bought a pulse oximeter early in the pandemic because of those stories, and still use it to reassure myself when I’m feeling vaguely unwell and my mind starts to go places.
The human race contains a remarkably large amount of variation along certain lines. Some people are alert and functioning under conditions that would kill other people.
Like many other people, I have been waiting to get my teeth cleaned for months due to the lack of dental hygienists. I was really looking forward to having it done on Thursday. Today I got a call to reschedule for next month and was able to learn that a covidiot had gotten so insulted because the hygienist was wearing a KN95 along with a shield that he took a swing at her. He missed, cops were called, he went off with them and hygienist quit.
As far as I can recall, dental hygienists wore fabric masks and goggles at least 50 years ago, why in the world would someone be so bothered about it now.
My dentist wore a surgical mask and a face shield before the pandemic, and i think it protected both of us. She upped her game to N95 and added air filters in each room more recently. But yeah, hygiene and infection concerns with dentists and their patients have been a thing at least since HIV in the 80s.
I have a friend who caught COVID early on (pre-Delta), and got the J&J vaccine not too long after it was available. He’s convinced that he’s now totally immune to COVID because he’s both had it and been vaccinated, despite all the evidence pointing to him being worse off overall than me, who has never had it, but who had two doses of the Pfizer vaccine and a booster.
He’s also convinced that it’s “endemic” and that we should just go back to normal because it’s not going away, so who knows. (he’s that sort of rare bird that’s right wing, but not a Trumper) I know that I’m disappointed in him because he’s absolutely smart enough to know better, but being in the Army apparently warped his views on stuff like this.
