Coronavirus 6: The Plague of Delta

[47of74]

I was hoping to get closer to the end of the year before hitting my six letter maximum, but a "health care worker" had a letter bitching about masks and vaccines.  That got the ol' neurons firing in sequencer.  Yeah, I'm about to step in it and send my own response in.  

[CTRLZero]

On 9/6/2021 at 10:33 AM, CTRLZero said:

Too bad he was an anti-vaxxer and died of Covid last week.  Maybe his wife can party on once she’s released from the hospital.

As an update, of course the family is holding an in-person memorial service.  😳  We think we’ll stay clear of that particular crowd.  

[sndral]

1 hour ago, CTRLZero said:

As an update, of course the family is holding an in-person memorial service.  😳  We think we’ll stay clear of that particular crowd.  

On the subject of memorial services, my 87 year old mom’s favorite cousin died last week - they were very close, growing up together, living in the same towns for many years, talking on the phone a couple of times a week for decades, etc.. 

Not sure what she died of, her family hasn’t been very upfront to my mom about that, but we did learn that they were upset when the cousin was placed in ‘the quarantine ward just because she tested positive for Covid’ when she was admitted to the hospital a couple of weeks ago.
Mom asked me to drive her to the funeral to be held in our old home town - 2 1/2 hours away. In ‘normal’ times I would have done so, but I said no, because, first - that branch of the family now live out of state, why plan the funeral in the old home town when no one lives there anymore? Plus they all live 9 hours away in an area w/ high Covid rates WTF. Second - that branch of the family are rabid Trumper/right wing idiots, I don’t know their vax status or mask stance because I deleted them all on FB during last years election, but I can guess & I’m not enabling my vaxed mom to mingle w/ a bunch of most likely unvaxed unmasked idiots traveling from an out of state Covid hotspot.

 

Edited September 9, 2021 by sndral

[Cartmann99]

 

[Miranda]

3 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

 

There’s nothing heartbreaking about it. If they’re not committed to the well-being of the people they’re providing care for, they don’t belong in health care and need to find other employment. 

[PsyD2013]

Today in the usual idiocy Facebook posts- there is a lot of praise for no mask mandates in schools and in communities.  Covid Kim stripped local control way from school districts and local government.  There are posts stating that individual control is the highest form of local control.  What the fuck don't people understand about public health?  There is such a focus on the singular- "my body, my choice" unless we are talking about abortion- then there is no choice.  I want out of this ruby red hell.  In other news- my son has recovered from his bout of Covid and has signed up for tickets to the Des Moines Trump rally.  I liked him better when he was down with Covid.

[47of74]

19 hours ago, FiveAcres said:

You know, one of the things I love about FJ is the admirable absence of tone policing. It is so nice to be able to go somewhere and say "fuck this, fuck that, and fuck that other thing too" and not have people coo at you that you are not being nice enough to your enemies.

Yeah if not for this place I probably would've publicly invited some asshole to go play in traffic some time ago.  Gives me a place to vent.  I'm done with nice to anti-vax/mask idiots and Branch Trumpvidians.  This could have been over by now but nope.  I don't want to be dealing with this when I reach the 1/2 century mark in just under 4 years but the way we're going that sounds like a possibility and I am over such people.

18 hours ago, Dandruff said:

Thank you for that fucking barrage of awesomeness.  The recommendation to have intimate relations with a piranha is my favorite, but I have some some close seconds.

And yeah I'm going to have to file away the recommendation to fornicate a piranha into the insult bank next time I need to tell someone off.

[Coconut Flan]

Vaccine mandates are what happens when people choose to be selfish and the rest of us don't want to gamble with our lives.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/09/politics/joe-biden-covid-speech/index.html

Quote

Biden announces new vaccine mandates that could cover 100 million Americans.

 

[47of74]

12 minutes ago, PsyD2013 said:

Today in the usual idiocy Facebook posts- there is a lot of praise for no mask mandates in schools and in communities.  Covid Kim stripped local control way from school districts and local government.  There are posts stating that individual control is the highest form of local control.  What the fuck don't people understand about public health?  There is such a focus on the singular- "my body, my choice" unless we are talking about abortion- then there is no choice.  I want out of this ruby red hell.

Yeah I am still trying to high tail it out of Iowa and hopefully get into Minnesota.  At least there's a somewhat functional government up there with Tim Walz in charge.  Might be a case of grass is greener on the other side but it just feels nicer up there than in Iowa.  I'm talking to an employer up in the Twin Cities now and have a couple other irons going in the fire.  I did apply for an assistant city attorney job in Dubuque but it was a halfhearted thing and they would really have to make it worth my while to get me to stick around.  They say the top of the range is $94,265.60 for a level one attorney so if they said how much do I expect in salary I'm going to say at least $93 to start.

[Cartmann99]

Is anybody else seeing their local Trump supporters turning against the flu shot?

[47of74]

1 minute ago, Cartmann99 said:

Is anybody else seeing their local Trump supporters turning against the flu shot?

Not that I've seen.  Wouldn't surprise me though.  These Branch Trumpvidians should go fuck a porcupine, piranha, and cactus all at the same time.

[Destiny]

11 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Is anybody else seeing their local Trump supporters turning against the flu shot?

I hate this country on a regular basis thanks to the Orange Menace and his followers. Jesus people!

[church_of_dog]

14 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Is anybody else seeing their local Trump supporters turning against the flu shot?

Just wait til it's time for their tetanus booster...

[NotQuiteMotY]

43 minutes ago, church_of_dog said:

Just wait til it's time for their tetanus booster...

I'm past caring if someone wants to give themselves lockjaw. They can't transmit it to others, so while I feel bad for their family, they're in the literal non-emotional sense only hurting themselves.

[church_of_dog]

8 minutes ago, NotQuiteMotY said:

I'm past caring if someone wants to give themselves lockjaw. They can't transmit it to others, so while I feel bad for their family, they're in the literal non-emotional sense only hurting themselves.

I entirely agree, and failed at expressing that view in my post.

I do wonder if some cognitive dissonance will occur along these lines, especially when dealing with vaccines and requirements (school, passports, military, etc) that have been in place for many decades and can't reasonably be seen as part of any current imagined political conspiracy.

Not than any of this is "reasonable"  SMDH

[Cartmann99]

Shots give COVID-19 survivors big immune boost, studies show

Quote

Even people who have recovered from COVID-19 are urged to get vaccinated, especially as the extra-contagious delta variant surges — and a new study shows survivors who ignored that advice were more than twice as likely to get reinfected.

Friday’s report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adds to growing laboratory evidence that people who had one bout of COVID-19 get a dramatic boost in virus-fighting immune cells — and a bonus of broader protection against new mutants — when they’re vaccinated.

“If you have had COVID-19 before, please still get vaccinated,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. “Getting the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself and others around you, especially as the more contagious delta variant spreads around the country.”

According to a new Gallup survey, one of the main reasons Americans cite for not planning to get vaccinated is the belief that they’re protected since they already had COVID-19. From the beginning health authorities have urged survivors to get the broader protection vaccination promises. While the shots aren’t perfect, they are providing strong protection against hospitalization and death even from the delta mutant.

Scientists say infection does generally leave survivors protected against a serious reinfection at least with a similar version of the virus, but blood tests have signaled that protection drops against worrisome variants.

The CDC study offers some real-world evidence.

Researchers studied Kentucky residents with a lab-confirmed coronavirus infection in 2020, the vast majority of them between October and December. They compared 246 people who got reinfected in May or June of this year with 492 similar survivors who stayed healthy. The survivors who never got vaccinated had a significantly higher risk of reinfection than those who were fully vaccinated, even though most had their first bout of COVID-19 just six to nine months ago.

A different variant of the coronavirus caused most illnesses in 2020, while the newer alpha version was predominant in Kentucky in May and June, said study lead author Alyson Cavanaugh, a CDC disease detective working with that state’s health department.

That suggests natural immunity from earlier infection isn’t as strong as the boost those people can get from vaccination while the virus evolves, she said.

There’s little information yet on reinfections with the newer delta variant. But U.S. health officials point to early data from Britain that the reinfection risk appears greater with delta than with the once-common alpha variant, once people are six months past their prior infection.

“There’s no doubt” that vaccinating a COVID-19 survivor enhances both the amount and breadth of immunity “so that you cover not only the original (virus) but the variants,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, said at a recent White House briefing.

The CDC recommends full vaccination, meaning both doses of two-dose vaccines, for everyone.

But in a separate study published Friday in JAMA Network Open, Rush University researchers reported just one vaccine dose gives the previously infected a dramatic boost in virus-fighting immune cells, more than people who have never been infected get from two shots.

Other recent studies published in Science and Nature show the combination of a prior infection and vaccination also broadens the strength of people’s immunity against a changing virus. It’s what virologist Shane Crotty of California’s La Jolla Institute for Immunology calls “hybrid immunity.”

Vaccinated survivors “can make antibodies that can recognize all kinds of variants even if you were never exposed to the variant,” Crotty said. “It’s pretty sweet.”

One warning for anyone thinking of skipping vaccination if they had a prior infection: The amount of natural immunity can vary from person to person, possibly depending on how sick they were to begin with. The Rush University study found four of 29 previously infected people had no detectable antibodies before they were vaccinated — and the vaccines worked for them just like they work for people who never had COVID-19.

Why do many of the previously infected have such a robust response to vaccination? It has to do with how the immune system develops multiple layers of protection.

After either vaccination or infection, the body develops antibodies that can fend off the coronavirus the next time it tries to invade. Those naturally wane over time. If an infection sneaks past them, T cells help prevent serious illness by killing virus-infected cells -- and memory B cells jump into action to make lots of new antibodies.

Those memory B cells don’t just make copies of the original antibodies. In immune system boot camps called germinal centers, they also mutate antibody-producing genes to test out a range of those virus fighters, explained University of Pennsylvania immunologist John Wherry.

The result is essentially a library of antibody recipes that the body can choose from after future exposures — and that process is stronger when vaccination triggers the immune system’s original memory of fighting the actual virus.

With the delta variant’s super infectiousness, getting vaccinated despite a prior infection “is more important now than it was before to be sure,” Crotty said. “The breadth of your antibodies and potency against variants is going to be far better than what you have right now.”

 

[Ozlsn]

Four year old girl dies of covid. Hopefully this will convince some other people to get vaccinated, because it is just heartbreaking.

The girl was too young to be eligible for vaccines, and Kali's mother said she regrets not being among the 60 percent of the county's eligible residents to get vaccinated.

"I was one of the people that was anti, I was against it," Harwood said. "Now, I wish I never was."

Maybe this story can get through people's thick heads that not vaccinating puts people at risk, maybe even people they actually care about.

[Audrey2]

So I was at my women's club meeting last night and overheard one of the women who works as a Church secretary for an Evangelical Church tell another that she will not be getting vaccinated. It sounds like she's gotten her hands on a letter written by an Evangelical attorney (I'm not sure if it's specifically for the church or if the church has just gone with others and found this letter) that they object to the vaccine because of the embryo cells from aborted fetuses. Never mind that as I recall someone on here said that happened in the 1970s. As I was overhearing her say this I thought you need to put your money for your mouth is. If this is such a strong conviction for you then you need a whole list of medicines, vaccines, and treatments that were discovered using embryonic cells so if there is a problem and you need to go into the hospital or receive medical care for any reason they don't treat you with any of those.

This kind of reminds me of Ronald Reagan and the stem cells, which she was so against stem cell research but once he had Alzheimer's it sounded like Nancy was appreciative of stem cells used in Alzheimer's research.

[Cults-r-us]

On 9/9/2021 at 1:16 PM, Cartmann99 said:

 

He is lying, again.

On 9/9/2021 at 7:50 PM, Cartmann99 said:

Is anybody else seeing their local Trump supporters turning against the flu shot?

I saw that last year and also proposed legislature ALL vaccines would be choice only. 

[Cults-r-us]

10 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

So I was at my women's club meeting last night and overheard one of the women who works as a Church secretary for an Evangelical Church tell another that she will not be getting vaccinated.

I overheard a woman say she'll get vaccinated when Franklin Graham tells her to. It occurred to me that the previous administration worked overtime to erode trust in science, medicine and media. I saw bumper stickers on a car that said "jail Fauci" and "media is the virus". 

It seems to me people who have cultivated people's trust, especially religious, have a responsibility to direct them to sensible choices. Since many people don't trust conventional sources of information, I wish there was a way to influence sources they do!

[Ali]

19 hours ago, NotQuiteMotY said:

I'm past caring if someone wants to give themselves lockjaw. They can't transmit it to others, so while I feel bad for their family, they're in the literal non-emotional sense only hurting themselves.

The tetanus booster also includes whopping cough and diphtheria. Whooping cough is quite dangerous for newborns, but I guess they don't matter because they are already born. I am done with these idiots.

Edited September 11, 2021 by Ali

[PsyD2013]

I listen to a lot of people who refuse to get the vaccine on the premise  they have "done research" and decided the vaccine is not for them. The lot of them would not know research if it bitch slapped them. Reading a few articles on line is not doing research. Posting and liking someone's vaccine/mask rant on social media- hate to tell you- not research.  Going down to the local livestock store and buying some horse dewormer because your neighbor says that the stuff can kill Covid in a few hours- not research.  Refusing to jet the jab because Fucker Carlson says  it violates your rights- not research.   Listening to your idiot governor tell the masses masks are bad for children-not research.   Research is doing a critical analysis of journal articles in a peer reviewed journal and doing a meta-analysis of the statistical results contained within.  Research is a subject matched experimental and control group in a double blind study of which then an appropriate statistical analysis is conducted, the results are discussed along with limitations of the study.  

[NotQuiteMotY]

4 hours ago, Ali said:

The tetanus booster also includes whopping cough and diphtheria. Whooping cough is quite dangerous for newborns, but I guess they don't matter because they are already born. I am done with these idiots.

It depends, though. The TDap/DTap does, and that's usually what they recommend if you're going to be around infants; I care if they're going to be around infants and they refuse. There is a straight tetanus shot, though, and that's what you usually get if you go to the emergency room with a deep cut. That's the one they're welcome to refuse if they want to play Russian roulette with their health.

[Dandruff]

7 hours ago, Cults-r-us said:

It seems to me people who have cultivated people's trust, especially religious, have a responsibility to direct them to sensible choices. Since many people don't trust conventional sources of information, I wish there was a way to influence sources they do!

If certain institutions won't direct sensibly, perhaps whatever insurers they have could raise their rates through the roof.

[Ozlsn]

1 hour ago, Dandruff said:

If certain institutions won't direct sensibly, perhaps whatever insurers they have could raise their rates through the roof.

I think for one demographic the restrictions on travel, being able to access businesses etc. will push them towards getting vaccinated, even if begrudgingly. Increases in healthcare premiums will likely shift another group.  It would be good if some of those prominent figures who have gotten very sick came out in favour of vaccination - and if some of those who are in fact vaccinated but pretend to be anti-vax were exposed and ridiculed for being the hypocrites they are.