Husband's covid death turns anti-vaxxer into vaccine advocate

[Matt]

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/ ... 09975/?amp

"We thought the vaccine was rushed,” Lowe said. “We thought it was more about money and power than about Americans and protecting the people."

Mikel served as a federal firefighter, working out of the Naval Air Station Base in Coronado until just a few months ago. He was born and raised in San Diego County, but his opposition to recent California politics drove the family to move out of state.

“We honestly thought that COVID was mostly political,” said Lowe said.

[craig11152]

I don't get how seemingly "intelligent" people can buy in to the Covid conspiracy and anti vaccine rhetoric.

[MotorCityRadioFreak]

The power of social media and GOP rhetoric brainwashes many. My mother got vaccinated, but she even has been falling for the propaganda that kids shouldn't get the shots. Ridiculous.

[jadednihilist]

I'm beating a dead horse here, but this is really a compelling graphic showing hospitalization trends (per 100k people) at a state level. It's really no surprise that hospitalizations are greatest in states that have relatively higher population density centers (so higher frequency of inter-household interactions) and markedly higher rates of hospitalizations with this 4th wave.



Massachusetts, with 78% with fully vaccinated and 88% with one shot is trending downward and has the lowest hospitalization rate in the country.

I would argue that the relationship between COVID-19 protection measures (masking, social distancing, vaxxing) and COVID incidence is highly non-linear, and we really have to surpass a tipping point (via natural + vaccine immunity, infection rates/spread) before these hospitalization surges go down long term. As others have stated on this board, and I have also mentioned in the past, it seems most logical to achieve immunity with the aid of vaccinations - rather than rolling the dice and hoping for a mild natural COVID infection. It's not so much the number of total COVID cases that matter, as much as it's the burden on our healthcare system, which has been absolutely unprecedented in our lifetimes in the US.

If you still refuse to get vaccinated, and especially if you're in a higher risk group, please please please at least aim to get monoclonal antibody treatments ASAP upon testing positive for symptomatic COVID infections. This measure could very much save your life, or at least greatly increase the probability of severe infections. I've seen too many people suffer horrifically -- and we're now at a point that in many cases, the suffering is much more preventable than ever. Keep in mind that >90% of the hospitalizations are comprised of unvaccinated patients. Even a 50% reduction in hospitalizations would go an extraordinarily long way in bringing us back to long-term normality; not to mention, this is the obvious fiscally responsible way to managing this pandemic.

[bmw]

...Keep in mind that >90% of the hospitalizations are comprised of unvaccinated patients...

Also keep in mind that 95% of the hospitalizations are also comprised of people 50 and older, regardless of vaccination status. And comparatively speaking, people under 50 comprise 2/3 of the population just like how vaccinated people comprise 2/3 of the population.

Point being, I can just as easily say that this is a pandemic of the elderly as much as anyone can say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

The problem REALLY is the relatively small subgroup of people who are ALL of the following:
-over 50
-unvaccinated
-without natural immunity

It is THAT group that I wish we would focus our efforts on rather than distracting from the issue with all these young people dying from Covid - people who really are, whether we want to admit it or not, statistical anomalies when you dig into the complete data.

[jadednihilist]

...Keep in mind that >90% of the hospitalizations are comprised of unvaccinated patients...

Also keep in mind that 95% of the hospitalizations are also comprised of people 50 and older, regardless of vaccination status. And comparatively speaking, people under 50 comprise 2/3 of the population just like how vaccinated people comprise 2/3 of the population.

Point being, I can just as easily say that this is a pandemic of the elderly as much as anyone can say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

The problem REALLY is the relatively small subgroup of people who are ALL of the following:
-over 50
-unvaccinated
-without natural immunity

It is THAT group that I wish we would focus our efforts on rather than distracting from the issue with all these young people dying from Covid - people who really are, whether we want to admit it or not, statistical anomalies when you dig into the complete data.

Raw hospitalizations by demographic group are a function of both infection rates and probability of severe illness, so in theory high infection rates in a lower risk group can result in the same number of hospitalizations of a higher risk group with low infection rates. Vaccine efficacy still scales proportionally with risk, meaning that older groups are still more susceptible to severe breakthrough infections (which again emphasizes the importance of monoclonal antibodies and maximizing the number of layers of protection one has to contracting an infection; as no one measure is great).



People under 50 at the peak of this 4th wave represent actually a bit more than 10% of the total deaths per 100k, per CDC data; owing to the more aggressive nature of the Delta variant (Fig 1). This is quite a bit higher than it was during previous waves (Fig 2).

Fig 1:


Fig 2:


Vaccination rates are highest among those >65 years and they also have the lowest infection rates overall (Figs 3 and 4). It's the younger demographics that are lagging in vaccinations and also having the most spread of infections (again per 100k). The people driving the infection rates have a lower probability of dying (but a much increased risk of hospitalization and/or long-term complications compared to previous waves), but they are absolutely exposing higher risk populations to COVID.

Fig 3:


Fig 4:


Figure 3 (as well as a lot of other independent data) makes it very clear that mass vaccinations reduce the spread of COVID overall; which decreases the burden on our healthcare system. You can use all the semantics you want, but there's plenty of evidence within the data (corroborated by subject matter experts that have a process-level understanding of these statistics) to show that it is the unvaccinated groups that are prolonging the impacts of the pandemic. The easiest way out is through proactive collective cooperation; but we'll also emerge on the other side through "natural" processes... however, I still contend that is much more expensive from a financial and especially human cost standpoint.