My guess is that the county had a really bad shock over Covid, bad enough that they accepted the need for the pass sanitaire (vaccine passport). Tomorrow we’re meeting friends who are largely British but live in France and I’ll ask them what they think.
Given how sloppy we are in the UK now, it’s been really impressive to see how diligent the French are. Tres bien mes amis!
j
Mmmm…mead
Closest known relatives of virus behind COVID-19 found in Laos: Studies of bats in China and Laos show southeast Asia is a hotspot for potentially dangerous viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2
So perhaps more deadly pandemics caused by viruses similar to Covid.
This quote from a nurse regarding anti-vax nurses being forced out answers that question from another angle:
“I hate to say it but people like this in nursing are worse than just vaccine deniers.
They are the same people who dehumanize their clients by saying that they all act out when the moon is full.
They are the same people who gag in front of their clients as they clean them up.
They are the same people who gossip with each other while caring for their clients.
This purge is better than most people realize.”
It’s not specific reasons, it’s an attitude, a worldview, held by anti-vaxxers. This view isn’t limited to nurses/doctors, but she described perfectly how it manifests in that group. Someone speculated that the cops who are quitting rather than get vaccinated are the police version of these nurses. I think she’s right, and I agree, this purge is a good thing.
I have subscribed to a lot of news sources, I get two papers, and I also get two daily newsletters in my email. One of the newsletters is from the NYT, because I used to subscribe to them. The other is from AP, because I recently asked them to sign me up for it.
Anyway, this morning I got articles covid in the two newsletters and on the front page of the (paper) Wall Street Journal. And they were very different:
NYT: Red Covid – look at how much more infection and death there is in states/counties that voted for Trump, and how much less vaccination. Conservatives don’t want to be told what to do, and maybe think they are “owning the libs”
AP: The US has enough supply of vaccine for elders who need boosters and also for the expected surge in demand when kids become eligible. (and further into the article – yeah, we expect most vaccinated people to seek a booster, and they’ll be able to get it. And our supply is strong enough that Biden has promised half a billion doses of Pfizer to the rest of the world. But a lot of doses will go to waste in the US, mostly because the states are trying to hang on to enough for the unvaccinated to get vaxxed.
WSJ: Covid’s Hidden Toll, one million children who lost parents – Covid has left a lot of orphans in its wake, especially in Latin America. With some sad stories of families that lost young adults and what’s happening today to their infants and minor children.
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I dropped my subscription to the NYT because I felt it was getting too partisan – an awful lot of political commentary in the “news” articles. I did that several years ago, but watching their reporting of Covid, I’m mostly not regretting it. Yes, they sometimes pull together a lot of data. But too often they’ve displayed it in less-than-transparent ways. The Economist’s reporting is … not really in line with me politically, but they’ve done a bang-up job of reporting covid, with excellent reporting of high-quality data displayed in ways that highlight important points.
I don’t think that finding the largest correlator for the people who are not vaxxing (therefore driving this continued deadly mess) is a partisan hack job. I would call it investigative reporting.
Has anyone seen a date attached to the OSHA mandate Biden wants that businesses with 100+ employees require vaccines?
If we’re going to avoid another midwinter slaughter after the holidays it has to be next month at the latest.
I think OSHA is still working on the actual rule. All the commentary I’ve heard has been of the, “well, we don’t know what the rule will actually look like, so we can’t say if it will stand up in court…but here’s what I think based on what we do know”.
That article isn’t why I dropped my subscription. And it was moderately fact-y. But it was also one of many many articles the NYT has run saying the same thing about Republicans not getting vaccinated.
The articles that make me glad I dropped the subscription include a couple that had graphics that were misleading at best. The underlying data was okay, but the presentation drew attention to unimportant details and away from important details. I don’t have any examples handy right now, but I remember at least twice puzzling out what a NYT graph actually said, and then being really annoyed with them. One of them was bad enough that they essentially retracted it the next day (they updated the article with a less deceptive graph.)
Presenting complex data graphically is part of my job. (I’m an actuary) and I take offense when it’s done really badly.
I agreed. In fact, I found the information to be a nice indicator of how well vaccines work. Before vaccines, results on different mitigation strategies (besides full lockdowns) showed significant improvements but they were usually small. The graphs in in this NYT article show major differences in infections and deaths. It’s really like two different countries.
A few years back I was deciding between subscribing to the NYT and the Washington Post. What you mentioned is what tipped me to the WaPo side. I generally think NYT’s reporting is top notch, but I find there are often editorial comments included in news stories, which I don’t appreciate, even when I agree with them. I’ve found the Washington Post reporting on Covid to be excellent, and I’ve been glad I subscribed.
Yesterday my company directed salaried employees to an internal website where we were to state our vaccination status, and provide proof (copy of the card, etc.) if we claim to be vaccinated. I suspect that the company is getting ready to return to work - including determining how to do the “weekly tests” for those who WILL NOT be vaccinated.
There was an accompanying chat room, since taken down (due to the usual suspects - usual statements about MY BODY, SHEEPLE, etc.). However, one person asked if having had COVID would be accepted in lieu of vaccination or weekly testing - because “getting the virus naturally provides longer-lasting protection against reoccurrence than being vaccinated.”
I’m a bit leery about depending upon that because 1) How do you report that you’ve gotten COVID and are not still a carrier (long COVID) 2) False Positives.
Your opinions on this would be appreciated.
This CDC study suggests that this is not true. From the link:
The study of hundreds of Kentucky residents with previous infections through June 2021 found that those who were unvaccinated had 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully vaccinated. The findings suggest that among people who have had COVID-19 previously, getting fully vaccinated provides additional protection against reinfection.
Thank you. However, I’m confused about something
First paragraph:
“In today’s MMWR, a study of COVID-19 infections in Kentucky among people who were previously infected with SAR-CoV-2 shows that unvaccinated individuals are more than twice as likely to be reinfected with COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated after initially contracting the virus. These data further indicate that COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone and that vaccines, even after prior infection, help prevent reinfections.”
(I added the emphasis.)
I’m not sure how to compare that statement with the third paragraph.
“The study of hundreds of Kentucky residents with previous infections through June 2021 found that those who were unvaccinated had 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully vaccinated. The findings suggest that among people who have had COVID-19 previously, getting fully vaccinated provides additional protection against reinfection.”
The comparison I was hoping for would be be between people who previously had the virus and remain unvaccinated, and those who have had the vaccination and have not had the virus.
It seems to me that if someone wants to substitute immunity through infection for immunity via vaccine, the onus should be on them to show that there is very strong data to support that, and that infectious disease experts have concluded from that data that people who have had covid are at least as protected as those who’ve been vaccinated.
At this point, I don’t think there is any such data, and I think the recommendations have been for people who have had covid to still get vaccinated.
Just as a matter of my own reasoning, I would think that vaccines provide a more predictable response, based on a set dosage and timing protocol. You know when you’re fully immune, and when the protection might be waning and require a booster, etc. I doubt there would ever be a way to have that sort of predictability with immunity from a covid infection alone.
ETA: And boosters bring up another issue. How will immunity be boosted for a person with immunity through infection?
Presumably, you give a booster the same time after infection as after vaccination.
I skipped one of my whooping cough boosters because i caught whooping cough. And now I’m back on the regular schedule.
Fwiw, most of what I’ve seen suggests that infection provides immunity somewhere between what you get from one and two doses of vaccine. And infection plus one dose of vaccine provides more robust immunity than being “fully vaccinated”. But there’s not as much money in testing immunity after recovery as there is in testing immunity after vaccination, so not as many studies have been done.
(I shared a hotel room with a friend who recovered from covid, with the help of monoclonal antibodies. Then she had to wait for the antibodies to clear before she could get vaccinated, and then she got vaccinated. I felt very safe sharing that hotel room.)
See this post: Is having Covid previously as good a protection as full vaccination? - #5 by Trom
That’s the largest study I’m aware of looking at immunity acquired through infection compared to vaccine acquired immunity. They found that natural infection provided stronger immunity than the vaccine. Here’s an article in Science discussing the study: https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital
Yeah, that was my point, though I see I was unclear. If someone wants to cite their Covid infection as a way of avoiding the vaccine, that can only go so far before they would need to get a vaccine as a booster anyway. Unless they plan to keep getting covid.
I’ve had Washington’s Covid notification app on my phone(s) since it was available. I’ve never been notified I’ve been in proximity to someone who has tested positive. Since Bluetooth uses battery power, and since my iPhone 6S battery would only last a few hours, I often had Bluetooth turned off. My new iPhone SE’s battery can last at least a couple of days since I rarely use the phone, so Bluetooth is on all the time.
It strikes me that the musca in the unguent is that people who have downloaded and use the app, and who have tested positive for Covid-19, have to self-report through the app, and that people who are more likely to test positive are the kind of people who A) probably wouldn’t download the app; and B) would report their status to a government they think is spying on them.
Agreed. I have Oregon’s, but I doubt most of the people I have to interact with do.