STEAM ROOM FOR ANGER
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Oh I don't think runor is anti-vax and I hope that came through in my post. She's hesitant and wants to know the long term effects of this vaccine. I get that--my personal medical history is different than hers and the coronavirus would very possibly kill me because of the reactive airway disease.
I do disagree w/ her regarding masks but hey! She's in Canada and I'm not so I get to enjoy her posts here with no germ passing.
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December11, Yes, it's the whole side A rudeness to side B and side B rudeness to side A... Holy cow! I am so tired of all of that!! Just be nice or STFU! (lol, OK, I know, not so nice <--- poking fun at myself)
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SeeQ, I didn't read "anti-vax" in runor's post either. I read uncertainty and frustration and skepticism about the decisions made and actions taken with regard to Covid. All of which make perfect sense with what's been going on for the past 18 months.
We are supposed to "follow the science", but this is all so new that the science changes daily (and that's not exaggeration... if only it was).
Then we have governments making decisions that appear to have nothing to do with the science. They seem to be making their decisions using a dart board, and they sure don't play darts very well (oh, sorry that I hit you in the head with the dart even though you were standing 6 feet away).
Over the short term I am perhaps less concerned than runor about personal freedoms and more concerned about the good of society, but my definition of "short term" is being severely tested now. I am willing to sacrifice for the benefit of society as a whole - I think that is how societies function and that is why humanity has not gone the way of the dinosaurs (yet) - but it's become pretty clear to me that those setting the rules and telling us what we are to sacrifice are completely clueless and don't know what needs to be done and what is going to work. They are making judgement calls about what and who is important. It's perfectly fair to question some of those calls.
Originally, governments put in place shutdowns and restrictions and mandated mask-wearing (well, originally masks did nothing and then masks became all important) in order to keep the hospitals from being overrun. Once the hospitals were not being overrun, restrictions were extended to try to reduce the number of deaths. Once the mortality rate from Covid dropped down as we understood better how to treat it, restrictions were extended to stop transmission and avoid even a single Covid death.
Those in charge appear to have such a singular focus on Covid that they've missed the big picture. What about the thousands of businesses that have gone under, destroying people's livelihoods for years or even decades to come? All those businesses lost, jobs lost, homes lost... what is the impact on physical health and mental health? What about the thousands of people who are ill with something other than Covid, who will be diagnosed and/or treated later than they should be? How many of those people will die unnecessarily? What about children whose education is being compromised... will this affect their opportunities for the rest of their lives? And then there are the vaccines. I got mine - I made the decision that there is enough science behind it that it was the right thing to do for both myself and for the good of society - but I know that there is more risk there than with the usual flu vaccine, because this is so new. And I admit that I really question the decisions now being made to give these vaccines to children, who face a low risk from Covid.
I understand that much of this new territory. The Covid virus is evolving and our knowledge of it is evolving. Stay at home and we'll put an end to it.... the vaccine will put an end to it.... we will need vaccine boosters for the variants.... this may become like the flu and we'll need a new vaccine every year.... what's next? I don't agree with all that runor said and I've reached a different decision in terms of my personal actions (at least in terms of having the vaccine), but I do agree that "the damage done to our society and friendships and economies might be far worse than any death toll from this virus.". I agree that much of what's been done has been based on guesses and forecasts and opinions and emotions. Given the circumstances, that might all have been unavoidable (or maybe not) but what is most frustrating is that we are not supposed to question any of this. Because everything done has been based on science, right? And we are supposed to follow the science.
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Beesie, ah well, i'm one of the covidzero people. And Canada, apart from the maritimes and perhaps NWT & Nunuvut did not even try to go covid zero. They stayed the course at trying to keep ICUs functioning. A certain number of deaths was factored in from the beginning as acceptable. I think we've done a hafl assed job that didn't accomplish much and pissed off everyone. Harders, stronger, faster lockdowns for shorter periods of time would have actually yielded results. This flipppy flopping for months is useless.
I have questioned my PHO from day 1 I always thought she was useless. I was watching streams from Italy of absolute disaster & she's all "well, no need to do anything now..." but when I was in clinical in a hospital in Richmond iwhich is a very Asian community, you bet your ass all the Asian pts, staff and visitors were masking up and already changing their lives in Feb 2020. They remembered sars 1. Their malls were empty, their shops didn't allow in people without masks - which other people were mocking & trying to challenge at the human rights tribunal.
Everyone in Canada was slow to act. WHO was slow to act & has a weird bias towards *not* closing borders which clearly needed to be done. The idea that a respiratory virus did not require masks was so absurd from the outset that I didn't listen to most of what they said. They were either stupid or lying (because of worries about hoarding & supplies). The fact that it's airborne and that room ventilation turns out to be more important than washing your hands also didn't become accepted till late, when there were a bunch of epidemiologists saying this from the outset.
I used to be a moderator on a board which tracks infectious disease around the world. Seasonal flu, bird flu, the 2008 swine flu outbreak, ebola.....I was really really into this stuff. And now I think that when the next pandemic hits - & it will - we are doomed. Unless WHO and individual nation health officials really step up their game, we are doomed. This was a lucky practice run twith a disease with a relatively low death rate & it still killed 580,000 people in the US and almost 25,000 in Canada. It's shocking and it was preventable because there are nations where they've had very very very few deaths & their economies did better. We screwed it up from the beginning.
btw, suicide stats are down in Canada & there have been reports from psychologists, including school psychologists that people are LESS stressed. The introverts have liked lockdown and not being bullied in the school or workplace. Opioid deaths are up though.
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If there was ever a time I was ready to move to Canada it was when our President at the time suggested to the medical folks at a press conference that maybe we could inject bleach to instantly kill the virus. I mean, you just can't make this stuff up!! I most certainly understand the skeptics.
My mental health definitely took a hit this past year. I hope things continue to get better, but as I said yesterday, I really don't want to be here for the next one.
moth would be correct, we will be doomed. Thanks for the discussion and everyone's perspective.
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I'm so so so angry at developers and real estate & the madness of real estate in Vancouver. We have developers aggressively aggregating land in our neighbourhood, pushing for rezoning. My little pocket of paradise. I have a creek. A beautiful green belt of mature huge evergreen trees. A fabulous garden & the creek flowing through it all. In winter I can only see a bit of a neighbour's roof. It's very private. It's serene, it's magic. It's where I homeschooled my kids, where they scrabbled in the creek & sprouted seeds in the greenhouse & tended their own garden bed & my son made a goldfish pond when he was a tween.... We birdwatch over breakfast, we have raccoons and skunks and coyotes. It will all be gone.
& I'm feeling untethered again because I had this anchor that I was holding on to: that I was going to die but I knew where my family would be & they'd be ok. And they could choose to go from the house or sell it or not but they'd have this & could decide. But now the developer and city hall are deciding. And now I don't know where they'll be, I don't know if I'll have to move while sick, how should I even begin to look for a house? Maybe when I'm dead my dh would rather live in a condo so does it make sense to buy another house. And who will look after my dog? I'm so upset.
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moth, people die from the flu, so I can accept some people dying from Covid. It's impossible to protect everyone. I think a reasonable goal from the start would had been to get Covid hospitalizations and deaths down to the level of the usual seasonal flu. Instead the goal posts have kept shifting, and I honestly don't know at any given time what the current objective is for any of the actions taken / restrictions implemented. That is beyond frustrating.
"I think we've done a half assed job that didn't accomplish much and pissed off everyone. Harder, stronger, faster lockdowns for shorter periods of time would have actually yielded results. This flipppy flopping for months is useless." Yes. And yes too to Canada and the WHO being slow to act and to the stupidity and lying. It would be nice if those in power learned from this, and next time came out of the gates swinging and did everything right, but between politics and political correctness, there's little chance that anything will be different next time. The only difference might be in the reaction and actions of the people themselves.
I'm sorry that developers are threatening your pocket of paradise.
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moth - I'm sorry you have this added stress. Hope you won't have to move.
Beesie - I would've preferred covid zero as the initial goal like some other countries. They showed it was possible. Montreal accounts for about 19% of covid deaths in Canada. Learning of the daily deaths at its highest was awful.
This Twitter thread along with the news article is a good write up of how Montreal has avoided (so far) the third wave that other Canadian regions are experiencing.
https://twitter.com/lisa_iannattone/status/1392967014558339074?s=19
We still need more people vaccinated including 12-15. Kids are at risk. They may have a lower risk of death, but they are getting infected and may suffer long term side effects.
There's progress though. Today the clinic called me to confirm my appointment tomorrow. First time they haven't asked me about covid symptoms.
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Moth like the comment about introverts and COVID. For me staying home was not a huge issue since do not like to go out anyway. Do not want to "hang out" in crowds. After medical stuff seems like just want to be home and with family I love. Life is too short for dealing with anything else.
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Bessie, I agree with your perspective, pretty much across the board - adding the media circus to negative contributors.
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Beesie, Thank you for bringing up education in your above comments. I am “steamed” about the number of under privileged children that have been lost through virtual learning. My son is in a private school and he has had in-person learning since September. His school received zero dollars from the government and still provided a safe and learning environment. I was initially nervous but I trusted the school and my pediatrician’s advice to send him. He had an incredible year, not one outbreak, and I am so grateful. All the private schools in my community were successful. But, I know families in the public school system that haven’t been so lucky. Kids that went from the gifted programs to refusing to login and falling behind in everything. Words can not express my anger towardsthe schools that didn’t even attempt to open and how they have failed their students.
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Awesome discussion!
As stated I am not anti-vax , but not yet entirely convinced that these vaccines are safe. When everyone on the planet is vaccinated there will be no control group and from a scientific method point of view that is a big, fat no no. So for now I am in the control group camp.
I think talking about lives lost is not a complete picture . We need to talk about life years lost. It is not a tragedy when frail elderly die. It is a sorrow and loss for the families involved. But the loss of frail elderly should surprise no one and is not, in my mind, a catastrophe that warranted locking the country down over. Sad events are not a catastrophe. If life expectancy in Canada is 80 years and you die at 87, you are not a tragedy. You are a statistical life lottery winner. We cannot count that death as a tragedy in the same way as the death of a 30 year old. The 30 year old who dies lost out on 50 years of expected life. THAT is a tragic loss! An 87 year old has been the happy recipient of his expected 80 years plus 7 more. Not a loss, not a tragedy, not a reason to close society and society has been harmed because of it.
Taking a vaccine as a social duty has not, to me, been demonstrated as a reasonable request. Govts do not get to decide in a knee jerk response what our social obligations are. Only societies get to decide that and we have not. Running scared and reacting in a panic in an information vacuum is not deciding. I think if there is another pandemic we likely will be in a bad state because people now are jaded and pissed off. Govts have mutilated and abused the scope of their power and there will be a backlash. Govt overreach and mismanagement this time around may very well be what kills many more next time.
Follow God. Follow Buddha. Follow Tony Robbins. Follow Oprah. Maybe they will lead you somewhere. But science should not be followed. Science, different from religion, does not demand silent supplication but disagreement, questioning and challenge. Science is a football getting kicked around and there is a whole lot of pushing and shoving and running around before a goal is scored. Science is very rarely a quick conclusion. It is a debate and endless challenges and tests of hypothesis. The word of a pharma company, a press release, that these vaccines are safe and effective is NOT adequate proof of long term outcomes. I tried to find evidence of mrna vaccines being used in humans prior to this and it seems there were some limited experiments that had unfavourable results, whatever that means. I think it is egregious criminal assault to promote these vaccines to young people. They have the most to lose if there turns out to be late, long term effects. We absolutely cannot guarantee them that they will be fine 10 years from now. Not a living soul on this planet has the authority to say that. No one. In light of that fact no one should be forced to take a vaccine. If someone wants to, they are welcome to. But force, coercion and passports? Never.
Life is not a medical model. I never voted for a govt who would molest us with endless emergency measures while passing a bill making themselves immune to legal action for their actions. Do you think your life should be dictated by people who made sure they could never be blamed for what they do to you? Doesn't make me think they're very honest or trustworthy. Big pharma got the same deal. If things go wrong 12 years from now hey, not their problem . They are off the hook yet profiting enormously. None of this smells right. I think I need to watch this a bit longer.
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As a reminder for any who are hesitant to take mRNA vaccine, the JNJ vaccine uses old and established method. Risk profile much lower than Covid risk profile. Reported to be more effective against the South African variant. And although reporting lower overall efficiency rates for breakthrough positive tests, has same types of numbers for preventing hospitalizations and deaths. Not a sermon, just a thought<3
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But I do think it is a tragedy for that elderly person to die alone in a hospital (because of covid) instead of at home with family (hopefully just of old age). Or in the streets unable to breathe because the hospitals are overwhelmed. Actually it's a tragedy for a person of any age to die in these ways. Even a cancer patient like me who is likely going to die young anyway. How you die matters.
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any premature and preventable loss of life is a tragedy. If someone is enjoying life at 80 and is killed by a virus due to inadequate precautions, that's a tragedy.
The dying alone in LTC or hospital is also tragic and is also directly related to amount of community transmission, which in turn is directly related to how well the community implements public health measures such as masking, stay at home orders, distancing, and vaccination. When those things are done well, the hospital visit restrictions got relaxed as well. Now it's 3rd wave here and no visitors again
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About a year ago I read a tweet something like: "Good news: We're 6 weeks away from ending the pandemic. Bad news: We've always been 6 weeks away from ending the pandemic." If only...
The half measures have only prolonged the pandemic. Covid is bad for the economy and families. All the people who have died had families and economic value. The economy will recover when the pandemic is stopped. Wiping out residents in senior care facilities is not end-of-life sad, it's horrific and unacceptable.
People are pushing to reopen or have restrictions lifted, but without proper precautions, we could trigger disastrous outbreaks like India is experiencing now. Months ago in Quebec City, a covid-denying gym owner ignored the shutdown order leading to a huge outbreak (around 600?) that killed at least one of his clients at 40 and landed the owner in the ICU. Seems like a bad business decision. How many life-hours/work-hours were lost because of this one business that ignored public health measures?
Now we have a better understanding of the virus, variants, and vaccines. We need more people vaccinated. As the vaccination rate increases, the infection rate decreases. We need better contact tracing, but this requires participation by the public (we had protesters refusing here). We can reopen, but carefully.
I wish more politicians listened to the scientists. Our QC premier and public health minister have not. Fortunately we have reporting by some very good health journalists in Montreal that force them to be more transparent.
I am not a scientist, so I read what vaccine researchers, public health experts, and epidemiologists recommend. I read what healthcare workers are experiencing. I ask my researcher-husband his opinion. His expertise is not epidemiology, but he understands research methods. Assigning yourself to the control group is not a thing.
I worry about vaccination inequality whether it's from vaccine refusal or lack of vaccine access. There will be pockets of high vax rates and low. Will areas with low vax rates create new variants? We are all connected.
The new variants are more infectious with more severe cases even in young people. This guy age 22 contracted a variant and ended up in hospital for 9 days. Except for his partially-vaccinated sister, everyone else was hospitalized. At least he got to share a room with mom.
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I knew an elderly fellow once who played cards every Sunday night just down the street from where he lived. Walking home one night he was struck by a car and killed. He was 92. I feel that's tragic. Live your whole life just to get knocked out by a careless person.
Same goes for this virus. Maybe we should of just let it run it's course around the globe. There would be a lot more dead people, I could have possibly been one of them. When you see what's happening in India right now, that could have been us! It wasn't. Was it handled great? No. Especially in the beginning.
Vaccines have been around for a long time and have been proven. Now that some younger folks aren't vaccinating their children, these preventable diseases are showing up again at epidemic levels in different parts of the world. I don't know, that's enough proof for me that they work. I've had all kinds of shots and I'm doing fine, and my off spring didn't turn out too bad either. Just sharing some of my thoughts.
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I absolutely agree that dying alone is a tragedy at any age! But let's not lay the blame for this violation anywhere other than where it belongs, at the feet of policy makers. There are a multitude of ways this could have been handled and I see the failures to do so as criminal neglect and failure to serve the needs of the client. Creative thinking could have made it so many did not die alone, but stuck in an unthinking rut we all stood back and let hospitals lock us out. Makes my blood boil.
It IS sad when elderly die, but not a national tragedy. Being sad is not justification for lockdowns. I see so many focused on covid death who are perfectly okay with all other deaths that happen every day to every age group. If you die of anything but covid, well, pfft, it just doesn't matter, you're not significant. The point being that people die all the time at all ages from risks we all happily accept all the time. I'm not saying covid isn't a thing. I'm saying our reaction to it was wrong.
There is a theory that it was mass vaccination that pushed the virus to mutate. So the mutations could, theoretically, be blamed on vaccinated people. Instead of doing their social obligation to develop humans who were naturally immune, they got vaccinated and put all the unvaccinated at risk. This makes the vaccinated the irresponsible selfish people in the crowd, running out to save themselves at the expense of others. Hmm. No, this theory has NOT been disproven but rejected and denied by people who have abandonned scientific method for wokeness.
I am leaning towards the J&J vaccine because of it's more known carrier system. Also I suggest that people do some YouTube searches on how to interpret efficacy data because the numbers as presented are often misunderstood and not as they would appear.
Being in the control group IS a thing. I am making a t- shirt that says so!
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The virus was mutating before vaccinations could have had an effect. India has an extremely low vaccination rate yet spawned an extremely infectious variant. The hypothesis, scratch that, the idea that mass vaccinations trigger variants is easily dismissed.
Innumeracy cannot be solved by watching a few YT videos.
Of course being in a control group is a thing. Assigning yourself to one as you have stated is not.
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Guess I should disclose my degree in wokeness is my MS in math and statistics. In my household, we have a Ph. D. and a few master's, though one is in English literature.
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Well, if I can join any religion I want or political party I want then I think joining a control group if I want is indeed a thing plus....t-shirts! Who doesn't want a t-shirt? Heck, people born male can up and decide to identify as female, actual DNA gender assignment means nothing anymore, to heck with what science says so I can absolutely identify as a control group. I have to go figure out what personal pronouns I want applied to myself and other control group attendees. One more thing on my do-list. Also, Youtube videos help. Not all of them. Some of them are stupid. Yet information is available to everyone equally. Anyone can undertake to view different opinions and approaches and ways of thinking and ways of being as well as how to suss out what data says about efficacy. As a statistician you well know that stats hide and bury as much as they reveal and that what is presented as the whole truth and nothing but the truth is often only part of the story and misleadingly presented to the average person. Like "A study of Canadians finds that 100% of them agree that we should erase our border and merge with the USA." Sure, if you surveyed 5 drunk guys sitting on a park bench and they all think that's a great idea because then they could drive to the US for cheap booze and smokes, then you are completely correct in saying your survey showed a 100% Canadian agreement. But it's not quite the truth, is it? So... I am sticking with the control group.
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I'll just sit over here by you, runor.
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LW422 - want a t-shirt?
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Yes, please.
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First time in the steam room, and here's my steam:
I have Stage IV cancer, MBC, and my body is already having a hard time with the supposedly fantastic medication I quite recently started. I've had one of those "Very Rare" side effects, and now it's looking like a reduction to the lowest possible dose may not be tolerable for me.
WTF?!? I was dx with breast cancer in June of last year, and I have never had any time to take a deep breath and relax - my first six-month scan revealed cancer in my spine. As in, "huh, that small thing we saw there that we thought was incidental turns out to be cancer, whoops, sorry, no break for you". From the beginning everyone telling me, "you're going to be fine, you'll have surgery and you'll be fine", then surgery+chemo you'll be fine, then radiation you'll be fine, then tamoxifen/letrozole you'll be fine...then MBC, and my MO telling me, "there's lots of meds we can try", but the FIRST one may already be done? It hasn't even been a year yet since I had the diagnostic mammogram and the doctor said "this is something bad".
THIS IS SOME BULLSHIT!
And I will likely have to wear a mask everywhere forever, since the MBC meds suppress my WBC/ANC, and my body's response to the vaccine (which I received already) may not have been robust due to said suppression. So when jerks ask why I'm wearing a mask, the CDC says we don't have to, what's wrong with you lady, I may very well scream at them, "because I have CANCER, you IDIOTS".
Okay, going to the doctor's office to get a shot in my bum.
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My youngest daughter had Covid and was very ill for about 10 days and refuses to get the vaccine because of the unknown side effects. Her fiance was discharged from the Army last December. He was an Army ranger and refuses to be vaccinated. My older daughter is a special ed teacher, she has RA, and received the J&J vaccine. The next day she tried to get out of bed and couldn't walk. She was better on the 3rd day, but had to take prednisone for a month due to joint pain. Her husband is now vaccinated and didn't have any side effects. Everyone is different and has different thoughts on the subject. My unvaccinated daughter has always worn a mask while traveling. I respect those who want to wear a mask. I had trouble breathing in Costco this past week and thankfully removed my mask while walking to the parking lot. I did receive a lot of "looks" from the mask wearers. I was outside and fully vaccinated. I am thinking a T-shirt would be nice saying that. I don't like the idea of the vaccine passport either. Operation Warp Speed was a tremendous success here in the US. I am thankful for the vaccines available. I know not everyone can receive them due to their health history and will have to wear a mask. I am hopeful we are turning the corner.
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SF-Cakes that is definitely some bullshit. I'm sorry
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Do you not think that the pathologist who is reading your results is not only a scientist, but also a physician? Will you trust those results since they are based on the science of cytology? Sorry but I say no to the t-shirt (got the vaccine) and to the ageism expressed which is a form of bias (including in statistics). As John Donne wrote, " No man is an island, entire of itself".
Medical oncologists specialize just as many other physicians do. So the one who treats you for BC will not necessarily be the one you need to treat a gynecological cancer. While their specialty is cancer most will subspecialize in a body system, etc.
SerenitySTAT, I second your message. As a former Infection Control Practitioner, I would not use YouTube as my source for scientific information and the theory on mass vaccinations causing mutations is probably being dismissed because it is misinformation. It is right up there with the use of hydroxychloroquine and bleach as deterrents for Covid.
In order to survive, viruses must mutate and they do this as they pass through communities/people/countries. We have been able to control childhood diseases by mass vaccination and are only seeing resurgences when herd immunity is diluted by the "antivaxers". I have seen children die from preventable communicable diseases prior to the specific vaccine being available, in this case chicken pox which evolved into encephalitis. It is not something I would wish on anyone to witness and I hope to never see it again. We are still seeing outbreaks of polio worldwide due to unimmunized populations. These so called "wild viruses" are variants that can then crossover into the immunized populations causing infections there. The immunocompromised are at the greatest risk and since they do not openly profess (and sometimes know) their status, I for one will regard everyone I meet as someone who might be. I will continue to mask, get vaccines as needed and practice social distancing for the safety of others as well as myself.
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moth: Is your creek by any chance a salmon stream? You can put the brakes on developers with that! I get depressed when I see a row of perfectly livable homes with "Land Assembly" signs up on all the lawns. There is usually a hold-out somewhere in the middle of them. That would be me! Your place sounds beautiful and I would be there on a rocking chair with a shotgun on my lap. I wouldn't actually, because I am a non-gun person, but I would be hopping mad.
SF-Cakes: the only ones screaming at you about wearing masks are likely the same people who yelled about having to wear a mask when it was desperately needed. I do believe (or pray) that we will settle into some kind of "norm" where an individual isn't singled out and berated for wearing a mask when it is deemed okay to go without. We may start seeing folks masking up when flu season rolls around - at least on public transit and such. Maybe get a mask that says "Don't Ask" or "F**k Off" :-)
flashlight: I have no problem with a "vaccine passport' depending on how it is used. You can't go to Africa, South America without proof of Yellow Fever vaccination. If you are Muslim and want to go on the Hajj, you must present proof of a meningitis vaccine. I would be happier on a long haul flight if I knew everyone on the plane had been vaccinated. Perhaps when it is no longer such a major global pandemic, and is just endemic I might feel better.
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