20% of LAPD officers, civilian employees say they won’t take Covid-19 vaccine
dailynews.com
dailynews.com
We need to remove these people from operating in public care but unions and friends don't currently care.
You shouldn't be able to be certified as a nurse, doctor, RN, PA, etc if you don't understand basic medical science.
Anyone who doesn't want their healthcare provided by people who believe such things? Or am I missing something?
An MD might have a 4-year undergrad in biochemistry or molecular biology or something, an internship at a biotech company or time in a research lab, they might be on one or two wetlab publications, they have another 4 years of medical training with lab experience for the MD, and another 3 or more years in residency training.
I believe most nurses have only an associates (2-year), or a 4-year undergrad degree with zero lab experience, zero biotech industry experience, and zero research-focused biochemistry/molecular biology/immunology training. They're not out there running ELISAs, Western Blots, minipreps and passaging cell cultures.
So they may not understand how the vaccine technology works at a particularly higher level than the general public.
Not a slight against nurses, of course, they do incredibly valuable work. But, upon hearing about a novel mRNA-based vaccine technology, they may be less likely than, say, an MD or a biomedical PhD to go 'that's a pretty cool application of a technology I understand pretty well."
Same thing with cops, fire, paramedics etc. They didn't exactly spend a decade in school to learn all about the magic of B cells and epitopes. So, they might be a little suspicious of something they're not exactly trained to understand, and seemingly not particularly curious about. Not really their fault I guess, it's just way outside of their wheelhouse.
In this particular situation, however, that becomes a bit of a problem since the public isn't necessarily able to contextualize their opinion on something, and may miss the fact that they may have zero clue what they're talking about.
Agreed. Weird time to be alive indeed.
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/09/24/cuomo-vaccine-covid/
It was an irresponsible position for Gov. Cuomo to take, even if he only took it briefly.
The problem is that everyone who wants it can't get it until essential personnel has been given several chances. Nearly 30+ million doses are sitting on a shelf because they're only offering it to healthcare and first responders, and the demand isn't meeting supply. But demand from older adults (60years +) is very high, but can't get it for another month or two.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/nyregion/new-york-vaccine...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/williesworld/article/Wil...
It's disgusting that there's vaccine sitting in freezers. Just start giving it to anyone who wants one. I've seen videos of debates where they sit around and discuss which "vulnerable" group should get it first. (Even though many simulations suggest people who are more likely to travel and interact should get it first to optimize the slowing of the spread.)
I'd happily queue early (and do a volunteer shift) to get a dose from one of these people taking a pass....
Unfortunately, this will need adoption and communication in all states separately since federal direction on these matters is lacking.
She didn't go into details, but she feels that the usual safeguards have been bypassed in an unprecedented manner when approving the covid vaccine, which in any normal situation would be considered completely unethical by the medical community.
She noted that this is an extraordinary situation and rushed approval was almost certainly the right move, but cautioned against judging anyone who refuses to get the vaccine and simply dismissing them as antivaxers. They have reason to be uncertain.
Honestly, people skipping the vaccine don't really "matter" in the near term. We have more than enough people willing to get the vaccine for many, many months, so if people want to risk reaching immunity the hard way that's their choice.
I mean, if that's true, that's really disappointing. Though I find it hard to believe, as I've seen examples of medical papers written from long-term post-vax surveillance. For instance this one from the WHO, finding that they could prevent the deaths of about 500,000 more young girls per year in Africa alone by using a different, more effective, measles vaccine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4052142/
I particularly like that example as it shows what's at stake: literally millions of lives are saved by vaccinations. Screwing up that with hasty approvals, and misleading the public about how much safety data we have, could lead to literally millions of additional deaths in the future if vaccination rates go down. Health authorities should be thinking about the long term, not just getting through the covid crisis.
The trials were not abbreviated, they weren't below usual sample sizes.
The only difference is the development time for the vaccine, which is only abbreviated due to the massive advance in development time that new mRNA techniques give us.
Normally that wouldn't be a big problem, as vaccines are usually rolled out relatively slowly, so population wide monitoring should pick up on any issues. But countries are aiming to vaccinate as close to 100% as they can get within a matter of months.
I wonder if the number wanting to say "no" is higher, and people just selected "unsure" in case there were repercussions for saying a straight "no"
It also probably helps that by the time patients are hospitalized they're likely past their most contagious point.
Having said that, I've been going to a hospital twice a week for the past few months for allergy shots, and everyone is strictly masked and distanced. Two examples of strictness details: nurses will open and close doors for me so I don't have to touch them. And once they had me take an allergy medication before getting my shot, and the nurse actually left the room while I had my mask off taking the pill.
Having said that, I go running in my neighborhood, usually through part of the campus of a (different) hospital. I regularly see people in scrubs with hospital IDs walking to the parking lot (within a few feet of me if I didn't avoid them) with their masks pulled down off their faces.
So seems there's quite a bit of variation.
Which is why I stopped wearing a seatbelt.
People watch what they eat to avoid heart disease and wear seatbelts to prevent dying in car accidents. Why not wear PPE to prevent COVID-19?
PPE reduces transmission. It doesn't stop it.
.. that sounds like a dangerous road to go down.
Australia has tried to "force" vaccines for years - if kids are vaccinated the parents get worse tax breaks, kids can't goto daycare or elementary school, etc. but AFAIK it's not a "legal" requirement, and nobody can be terminated from employment.
People who have been vaccinated themselves will not care if the police they have to interact with are vaccinated or not (well, 95%ish not care).
People who have not been vaccinated should err on the side of assuming anyone they come in contact with is not vaccinated (and is possibly infected) anyway, and should take precautions.
No, that's not perfect, because precautions can still fail to work, but it's not absolutely the worst either.
On the flip side, I don't think it would be unreasonable to have police (etc.) who refuse the vaccine temporarily reassigned to roles that limit their interaction with the public.