Hospital exec says employees are walking off the job
cnn.com
cnn.com
[1] https://www.nwahomepage.com/knwa/mercy-employees-frustrated-...
I would rather have a job that pays $X but offers flexible work hours and vacation time that allows me to be a better parent, than a job that pays $1.5X but won't let me take a day or afternoon off to (e.g.) take my kid to the doctor, etc.
Granted, that probably applies more to WFH desk jobs than front-line nurses.
I'd suspect that it's less of an absolute "magic number" and more like a ratio compared to the alternative. Like a 2X or 3X salary increase, maybe more.
If I was making $30K a year (slightly less than the national individual median income) and had kids, I'd have to strongly consider a $150K job that could open up a completely different set of opportunities for the kids. In a lot of places in America that's a leap from "borderline poor nutrition and you better hope you're smart enough to earn a full college scholarship... and try not to get shot in the meantime" to "safety, healthy food, and we're able to invest in your future."
If I was already making $125K a year that $150K wouldn't be so persuasive. Not upending my life for that.
Although, I suppose, once we start talking nannies and tutors we're probably looking at closer to $250-$500K anyway. A full-time nanny is... well, a full-time employee.
Interesting case. I'm not a lawyer and have only given this a quick read, but it seems that the amount she could owe back was essentially unbounded, the longer she was there the more she could owe back. That was a major factor in the decision against Buc-ee's. See pages 8 and 9, in particular. I don't think this would work against bonus claw backs in general, only if they were similarly considered unreasonable and also only in TX, whose laws were violated in this case. (EDIT: Or states with similar laws, obviously.)
A $10k signing bonus that has a bounded and shorter obligation period could be considered reasonable.
> As noted above, an enforceable covenant must contain limitations as to time, geographic area, and scope of activity to be restrained that are reasonable and do not impose a greater restraint than necessary to protect the employer’s business interest.
https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/BC/htm/BC.15.htm
Sections 15.50 and 15.51 are the relevant parts.
Last, 28 / hour is fairly low for an RN. While indeed shows a median salary of 28.30 in New Orleans, it seems like most companies in the area are hiring at 54-64 dollars per hour setting the median for the pandemic at 46.52 per hour.
If she can nearly double her pay, who cares about 10k... I've never seen a company try to enforce these.
The comment you reply to is giving really bad advice to ignore it. That sort of clause is valid and the company may or may not action it. You don't know.
What your friend should do is interview for other companies and mentions to the HR interview that she has to refund 10k if she leaves now, and ask whether they would be able to cover it. It's routine for companies to offer a sign-on bonus to cover this sort of things and you can expect the same claw back clause attached for one year.
Alternatively, if she has the money AND can get a job that pays significantly more, she can switch anyway, the worst that can happen is that she has to pay some money if the company asks.
Don't start me on EMTs working 24 or 48 hour shifts for $11/hr.
Money can't buy happiness, but not being able to take care of your basic bodily needs can absolutely buy unhappiness.
No but not having enough will make you unhappy, and keep you trapped there.
Usually when someone says this to me, I respond with "then you're spending your money poorly". What I mean to say is that more money buys more flexibility and options, which should lead to more opportunities to leave unhappy situations or at least add more happy situations. Note that this is a generalization so there are plenty of edge cases to counter this.
My guess is that there is a very strong diminishing returns effect to the utility of money, and that, at some point, other effects start to dominate. Perhaps what's happening with health care workers is a case study for what's going on there.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom...
I should have qualified in my parent post that it assumes all else being equal.
But both cost money.
Generally Speaking in all but the biggest cities that is probably around the 60K-70K annual mark anything over that a person might put other things ahead of salary
However if you are working for $60K you bet you ass MONEY is how a company should be showing their love...
But it doesn't work if you're struggling to make ends meet. There are hospital workers who don't have health care because they can't afford it for example.
I believe the GP was referring to the other "stuff" companies try to do to get you to feel like they care about you, but that don't impact your ability to make your own choices about your life the way more time or money do.
e.g., "free" swag, company-wide retreats/outings
I wouldn't give that flexibility up for double the pay. If I'm ever in a job where they routinely abuse off hours or disapprove of taking time off, I'll be looking intensely for something to replace it.
Also I did end up returning to that company after 4 years and was able to get an even bigger raise upon my return. As always the best way to increase your pay is by leaving, so sad to be honest.
I just recently moved from a place with very good culture and benefits to a contracting company with much worse benefits. Just going from five weeks vacation to two weeks alone really stings. And my pay only went up 10% ... it wasn't only the money, it was because I wanted something new, but I still have a growing sense of regret.
In the case of hospitals, it’s almost always the top brass’s lack of willingness to hire more people that causes the greatest pressure of culture. Without a person willing to argue that the admins should be paid less so that each individual doctor has more time for each patient, the culture will remain toxic due to the stress that causes the doctors.
Money can't fix that.
Her point was for many medical personnel, it's not about money, it's about being exhausted and burnt out.
However, the bedrock of our society has been a growing working age population that is OK with meager wages and quality of life at work, allowing us to lives more luxurious than otherwise could be. This dynamic should change once the working age population decreases relative to the old age population who need the services.
Among physicians and medical researchers with PhDs, though, you'll find very little resistance to vaccines.
We shouldn't treat the opinions of a CNA who might have had as few as 85 hours of education as "the opinions of a medical professional" - -that- is entirely valid. Their opinions can be credible, and they can have valid concerns, but they're not held higher because they have a cert or license or degree.
This thread was about people perceiving a new vaccine, as one not tested enough.
This is vastly different from someone which has resistance to vaccination overall.
I am quite concerned that such mislabelling of people, could lead to disaster.
[1] https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/ [2] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.102797
Then so was the comment it was responding to
So here, the poster asserts that they find it notable, as in worthy of remark, that within the domain of healthcare people are opting out. The poster does not make any conjecture or assertions aside from that, the poster does not lean on any position nor support one from the authority of the "healthcare worker" mosaic. Instead, the poster very simply states that it is remarkable that that cohort chooses to remain unvaccinated without any further context.
The proceeding post moves to make assertions and stratify the cohort into classes, and implicitly posits the superior decisionmaking of the educated, arguing at what is in actuality a phantasm, as the parent did not postulate anything whatever. I suspect he projected some archetype onto the parent, hazarded induction, and argued with an appeal to authority in an attempt to make a point that needn't be asserted in the context.
I have real work to do.
Whether or not medical consensus has been more predictive than a coin flip historically is an empirical claim. I have no idea if it's true, but that seems doubtful. It's particularly interesting to cite penicillin as an example of medical authorities being wrong. Child mortality has dropped more than a hundredfold in the United States since the invention of penicillin. Not that penicillin is solely responsible for that, but I have to question whether possibly negative developmental effects you are trying to cite here really offsets the negative effects of children having potentially deadly infections. I had a severe case of pneumonia when I was 5 and would have died if not for antibiotics. Death is surely the worst possible negative developmental effect.
And you've managed construe a total misapprehension of my intended point. A fairly simple medicine that has been deployed for a very long period of time, very well studied and understood, can still generate novel information. My point wasn't to squeeze mortality rates or make positions on the use and importance of penicillin, simply to evince readers the point there are still unknown unknowns, in practice, of something that's been widely proliferated for nearly a century.
This isn't to knock those concerns. But while neither an MD, an LPN, or a layperson is an epidemiologist, we should be exalting the opinions of them by virtue of their authority. Not because you _need_ to be an epidemiologist to have a valid opinion, but because the above buys you no more merit, in and of itself.
> "I want to see more testing done," she says. "It took a long time to get a flu vaccine, and we made a COVID vaccine in 6 months. I want to know, before I start putting something into my body, that the testing is done."
> Many of her co-workers share her feelings, she said.
Would have been nice if the article included responses to these concerns. Plenty of shaming about how dangerous passing covid to patients can be, but I didn't see anything that actually addresses the confidence problem.
edit:
Looks like a different hospital worked on the confidence problem with some success:
> "There was a lot of hesitancy and skepticism," says William Schaffner, MD, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious disease at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. So the infectious disease division put together a multifaceted program including Q&As, educational sessions, and one-on-one visits with employees, "from the custodians all the way up to the C-suite," he says.
Today, HHS data shows the hospital is 83% vaccinated. Schaffner thinks the true number is probably higher, about 90%. "We're very pleased with that," he says.
Here's one simple question: who's liable for the damages/complications from the vaccine.
The answer: it's complicated.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/covid-vaccine-side-effects-c...
https://fortune.com/2021/04/07/covid-vaccine-safety-is-astra...
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-are-pharmaceutical-compa...
But why should it be? If you trust your product, that's a no-brainer to cover the consumer for damages. If you don't...
This assumes a lot of things about the US legal system that aren't really true. A company can get sued for anything. And the cost of litigation is nontrivial. In the US, by default, each party is liable for their own litigation costs. This means that if 20000 people decide to sue Pfizer (you know, 1% of 1% of the vaccinated in the US), Pfizer now has to deal with the litigation costs of tens of thousands of lawsuits. Even if they win every single one, they're paying for hundreds, or even thousands, of lawyer-years in billables.
And while many of those might just be people hoping for a quick buck, or people with legitimate concerns who are ultimately mistaken, some will be agenda-driven people with funding to make the cases last, and whose goal is to make Pfizer look bad, because those people think vaccines are dangerous and the people who make them should be punished.
And Pfizer is on the hook for all of that even if there are no damages. Zero, zilch.
They can recover those costs if the lawsuit is frivolous. And we're talking about a billion dollar company racking billions in profits fighting in court against... sick people robbed of their health's. A balanced fight indeed.
No, in this hypothetical, we're presuming that the vaccine has no side effects. So these people aren't sick people robbed of their health, but either mistaken or agenda driven.
> They can recover those costs if the lawsuit is frivolous.
This is a high bar and isn't always even possible, depending on the jurisdiction. Often it requires things like the person filing the suit to know the suit is frivolous.
In college I heard insane stories from the nursing majors. Apparently going on shifts working 72+ hours non-stop is the norm. Imagine spending 72 hours in that hell: delivering this guy's meds, then checking this guy's blood pressure while he berates you, then typing in some paperwork, then giving this baby lab work while he's screaming, then doing more paperwork, etc. for 72 hours straight. I can't imagine it, I can barely imagine spending more than 3 hours.
Anecdotally, the few times I've been to doctors' offices and hospitals, I always notice the stress on doctors. Doctors and nurses are rushing everywhere, and they try to act nice but are simultaneously drained of emotion from disrespectful patients and general fatigue. Ironically sometimes they don't look that healthy, with all due respect, probably because of the immense stress and that it's hard to fit in exercise when you work 12-hour overnight shifts.
Also, I live in Massachusetts where hospitals haven't been near capacity for some time now. Everything I described is just regular operation, pre-Covid.
In a secondary analysis that was adjusted for the number of patients per resident physician as a potential confounder, intervention schedules were no longer associated with an increase in errors.
A mechanic sits down next to a doctor at the bar. They get to talking. Before long, the mechanic says, "hey, you and I aren't so different. We both open things up and fix 'em. How come you get so much more credit than I do?"
The doctor says, "You get to turn the cars off before working on them."
[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/05/03/architect-vines/
I've heard this claim before, but this seems like a communication problem more than anything else. Keeping insane work schedules as a means to address it seems really suspect to me.
The culture of medical education in the west places doctors in a bubble where 48 hours exhaustion marathons are glorified and considered a rite of passage. Other fields have found ways to do handovers with minimal to no impact on the continuity of operations.
Funny tradition that refuses to die.
Great show called “the Knick” where I learned about this.
Over the decades hospital administration has grown (because health insurance is complex). Seems obvious that money would be better spent on people that provide healthcare to ease the pain of those currently providing it.
Try being in EMS.
24... 36... 48. The private ambulance company I used to work for allowed you to work 60 hours straight, and then required an 8-12 hour break, if you wanted to work up to another 60.
Absolutely not and it’s insane to even think that could be true.
Around here the absolute maximum I've heard about is 12.5h and that includes at least two mandatory breaks.
For example my brother-in-law is a firefighter. He spends 3/4 days straight in the firehouse and then comes home for 3/4 days and works something like 12 hours straight when he is on call and gets rest periods when not actually doing firefighter work. This is possible because the firehouse basically has a small dorm in it. When I ask him when he is going to work he says he has a three day shift coming up. Because he doesn't come home, my sister definitely considers it "non-stop".
I can easily imagine health care workers being on-site for a few days at some sites, like a firefighter. Especially in areas where commutes could be prohibitive.
The typical maximum scheduled is 48 on, 96 off.
Around here (west coast) it's typically called a Detroit schedule (so not just west coast, I guess!)... 24 on, 48 off, but even more closely around here we use a Modified Detroit, which is a nine day rotation, where you work a 24 hour shift on days 1, 3 and 5 of the rotation, and have days 2, 4, 6-9 off.
I believe it’s 10 hours for the first two days (you’re off in your own home in the evening). The next two nights are 14 hours, and the fire fighters are in bed if there is no calls. I think day shift is 7 am to 5 pm, and night shift is 5 pm to 7 am.
It’s amazing what type of hours Americans are doing.
I'll be the first to admit I don't understand precisely what is going on or the challenges involved. Still, my understanding is that this scheduling is just for drivers. Overworking drivers is somewhat scary but necessary because their district has a severe shortage of them. It seems they're hard to hire because they need special certifications, training, and additional experience, and local firefighters have struggled to pass the necessary tests. Therefore, the city "asked" the existing drivers to do extra shifts while hiring new drivers.
At least that is what they said about two years ago...
Looking at the numbers a bit more closely. 48on 96off is 1:3 uptime per firefighter. 72on 72off is 1:2, increasing the uptime but also giving at least some amount continuous away time. Probably the odd 4 day shift is because of extract coverage days, like the fourth of July, or something. Or if a driver needs a vacation. Which is one nice thing they did. They did increase the amount of paid vacation the drivers get as a kind of compensation. Not enough to make up the difference of course, as that would defeat the whole point of the long shifts, but something.
C'mon, that's 3 straight days, i.e. skipping 2 nights. How can that be 'the norm' anywhere? Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence - or in this case, just any evidence.
I can reliably say that they’re still very overworked. 12+ hour shifts is the norm, and sometimes even 24 hours.
This vague allusion doesn't do much to convince me of the 72-hour claim. While we're doing anecdotes of extreme sleep deprivation, check out this personal account and AMA of someone who claims to have stayed up for 81 hours straight. What makes me doubt your "multiple people" is that after missing only two full nights of sleep (so ~48 hours), people start hearing and seeing hallucinations, and can't reliably hold conversation, much less deliver healthcare: https://old.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/6sab7t/i_stayed_awake_...
Turns out the healthcare systems didn't get overloaded by just the virus, but also the years or decades old issues bubbling under the surface.
Nurses all the way in Finland are voting with their feet as well. Management that isn't up to par, working hours, pay... David Graeber's essays about how caring work is both underpaid and underappreciated rings true.
and if you thought spinning up a chip fab in Texas is taking too long, wait until you try to solve the problem of spinning up more doctors. the residency program that takes up years of their schooling relies on having other doctors mentor them.
The nursing shortages are entirely due to the fact that these nurses have left bedside care due to the BS they have to deal with from understaffing, poor compensation, terrible shifts/hours, to abusive management and patients.
The "nursing shortage" is as much a myth as the current labor shortage. There's only a shortage of nurses at current pay rates and working conditions.
The private insurance companies are a big factor driving the consolidation, too. As the care networks consolidate their negotiating power, it gives them more and more of a competitive advantage over their smaller competitors, who have relatively less ability to negotiate good rates. That, in turn, leads to them having to drop off of the insurers' networks, which then results in patients being directed elsewhere.
I certainly don't want to say that government influence has no influence, but the brand of capitalism that sees government as the source of all evil is more about politics than economics. Economically speaking, cartels and informal cartel-like systems can be just as harmful. You don't get a healthy, well-functioning market by indiscriminately yanking any one lever; you get it by carefully tending the garden, and balancing a lot of competing considerations.
But what you can absolutely do is call and ask. Assuming you have the time to do so, of course. Urgent care does have a distressing tendency to be urgent.
And it is wise to do so when you can. For a really pedestrian example, it's worth asking your pharmacist about the retail price of a drug before paying. If the retail price is lower than your prescription plan's copay - something that happens quite often - then there's no sense putting it on your insurance. And no, I don't think it's the pharmacist's job to keep track of that. The elephant in the room in this discussion is that American culture already does way too much shitting on service industry workers. We need less of that, not more.
Private hospitals in particular are never going to be particularly amenable to keeping the kind of slack that would be required to handle a pandemic. They barely keep enough staff for normal operations.
testing tests all patients being admitted to the hospital
no wonder they are overworked
They wouldn't budge on anything, and as last summer's surge was dwindling, were planning on returning to the status quo.
She walked.
https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/mobile/when-is-the-strike-vote-fa...
No one wants to pay more taxes, No one wants healthcare workers get less money, No One wants substandard care..
You can not have All 3, More Care, and More Pay requires more Taxes... Canadian's however do not want to pay more Taxes.
It is beyond me why people think the solution to a government created problem is more government
> The last two payments I received from Medicare were as follows: $285 for a six-hour cardiac anesthetic and $78 for the anesthesia services required for a knee replacement. These fees had been imposed through a mechanism referred to as the resource-based relative value scale, more appropriately called the Rosemary’s baby of healthcare. According to the folks at Harvard who gave birth to this creature, every physician service had a price and they knew what those prices were.
> Prices are signals, after all, and Medicare was sending me a signal regarding what they thought the service I provided was worth, or they meant to intentionally cull the ranks. I felt obligated to respond with a rational signal of my own and as I’ve mentioned, I quit participating in their scheme.
> To further bolster this bankrupt-hospital narrative, physicians and surgeons were told there was no money to buy the equipment and supplies they needed. It was becoming increasingly obvious that it was time to get out. I had no desire to be controlled by the rising administrator class.
Next he discusses how under the guise of protection of customers and care about the citizens, government (lobbied by hospitals) tried to close their practice up because they charged 1/10th of what "not-for-profit" hospitals did.
https://mises.org/wire/why-arent-there-more-free-market-surg...
Clearly it can work since AFAIK everyone is doing it, and it seems to be basically fine. Not perfect, but fine.
> The first patients to arrive after we posted prices were Canadians. This was instructive, as these patients had so-called insurance coverage. There was no access, however, to the care that many of them required. The most common story then as now for the Canadians was a patient waiting two years to see a gynecologist for a hysterectomy to stop their bleeding, bleeding usually so severe that intermittent transfusions were required. For $8,000, which covers the facility, surgeon, anesthesia, pathology, and an overnight stay at the surgery center, Canadians can end their nightmare. The first question a Canadian asks when they call us is how long they’ll have to wait. Our answer that there is no waiting time is met with disbelief. A Canadian friend of mine has told me the old joke that no Canadian is truly content unless standing in line.
All thanks to the success of a "state-directed monopsony" of a "developed country".
(1) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
"In 18 months, she saw more patients die than most nurses before COVID saw in a career."
Know around 10 nurses at a big hospital. First they've always been on the brink of walking out, they earn on average less, in the UK, than starting IT workers, and they have much more responsibilities.
They're shifts have been understaffed since ever. Everyone always talks about leaving
In the beginning of the pandemic most old and sick were discharged to nursing homes, where they died
And the hospitals actually had less people, but also less capacity since they could use only every other bed for distancing. So at least 50% less capacity. And wards where covid tested positive had to be closed for 2 weeks
The excess mortality is not big enough that would be true for nurses in same position
https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/oxzmdc/florida...
- Healthcare staff have great animosity towards the unvaccinated patients. They aren't victims here, they did this to themselves. Nobody can muster any more compassion, especially for these people. Patients and people at large, not even just the total-nutjob anti-vaxxers, are tired of restrictions. "Things are opened back up, I deserve to have a good time."
- Staffing shortages building over the pandemic are making nurses hate the hospital administrations even more than before. Many were furloughed or laid off 6-12 months ago, and are now asked to work mandatory overtime with ridiculously unsafe nurse:patient ratios.
- ... all while traveling contract nurses and providers are being utilized by the hospitals at a pay rate 3-4 times what staff are paid. Many nurses are leaving their jobs that pay $30/hour to take a traveling assignment at $90+/hour. These people are working side by side, there's disdain towards the travelers, but who cares they're making bank.
- The "healthcare heroes" messaging is so obviously just a scam and the healthcare staff are now almost 18 months into a kafkaesque, double-speak nightmare. Previously this was reserved for veterans, and of course they were similarly screwed.
It's all just been building up since the beginning of the pandemic - issues with skilled staffing are very real and happening across the country.
I do realize “pay me more” is a balm that is acceptable to many, but I actually like to enjoy what I do.
The speech about "our caring culture" doesn't.
In addition to this, I’ve also heard anecdotally that many of the unvaccinated (by choice) patients have animosity towards the healthcare workers themselves because the patients see this virus as politicized.
Overall I can imagine that it’s resulted in a more-hostile-than-average working environment which is bound to be stressful.
Unfortunately they are correct on this, this pandemic has been heavily politicized in the States, which imo was a very wrong thing to do. They tried the same thing in my country (Eastern-Europe), with a political party blasting their logos on “vaccine information” tents installed on the sidewalks but fortunately it hasn’t caught on that well.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2021/06/28/covid19-va...
"Among practicing physicians, 96% have been vaccinated. The rate drops to <50% among nurses"
Arkansas, where this story is taking place, has only a 37% vaccination rate among the general population.
That seems strange to me considering there are TONS of diseases that are completely the victims fault. Diabetes, heart diseases, lung issues, etc can all be caused because someone chose to make unfortunate decisions. Why would you get into a profession where you're in contact with this kind of person in a daily basis and then get upset that you come into contact with them?
May I practice medicine in some outlier area, but all the headlines I've seen just seem to dramatize things. The one about the doctor who claimed she would tell patients "it's too late" then intubate them soundly particularly like bullshit.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
In short, it's not good. Normal times for her community are always a bit stressful and burnout is real. Prior to COVID, a typical community, non-academic job, consists of 12 hour shifts and and at least 15 shifts a month. Some of those shifts will be weekends. Expect at least 3-4 nights. Realistically, the shifts end up being longer because of charting and billing. Alternatively, if someone codes (dies) at the end of the shift, you're there longer to see that the patient is stabilized and to give a proper sign out to the next physician. When COVID started, the number of shifts per month went up. Simply, there are more sick patients and more people dying, so the work requirements were higher. Practically, that means double the number of worked weekends and nights. More days a month. Really, they end up with only a handful of days off a month.
Beyond that, a couple of things started to really wear on the community over time. One, physicians like to see their patients get better. For COVID, once they hit the ICU, they're probably going to die. And, it's not just they show up and die right away. Medical technology is really good. Mostly, they stay on the vent for weeks at a time in a very fragile state and then they die. Emotionally, it's very difficult to see someone that you care for intimately die like that, repeatedly. Two, grieving families are rarely easy to deal with, but COVID has made them incredibly abusive and hostile. It's pretty common now for the families to either in person or on the phone to scream, berate, and degrade the physicians and the care they provide. They accuse them of trying to kill their family or to providing inadequate, incompetent care. They Google the treatment of the week and demand that it be used. When they don't get what they want, they threaten lawsuits or demand transfer to another hospital. These transfers are not possible since moving the patient will kill them and the other hospitals are already full. Now, most physicians don't require someone to kiss their ass (some do), but given the amount of time, energy, and tears that they put into taking care of someone, it's deflating and demoralizing to be treated like this. No one wants to. There's always been abusive families, but I'll contend that the situation has gotten much worse. Three, many hospitals have put restrictions on the personal lives of their staff, which has diminished their ability to cope and recharge. A common refrain is that they're "all hands on deck," which translates to a ban on out of state travel or approved vacation. Now, while it's important that the medical community set a good example and keep their patients safe, they're also people and need to decompress. So, things like going one state over to a national park while staying in a remote cabin are now fireable if you get caught. Certainly, this is not the case everyone, but not so uncommon.
But, really, the primary stressor now is that, from a medical point of view, the whole situation is rests on stupidity and it's incredibly frustrating and stressful. All of the cases my wife sees now are unvaccinated. It's not to say there aren't breakthrough cases, but she's not getting them. Now, eventually, someone gets close to dying and the family gets called in. They'll ask ahead of time, "Are you vaccinated?" Universally, the answer is no. They push a little, "Soooo, your mother/child/husband/wife is sitting here dying of COVID, you may want to think about a vaccination." They'll answer, "No, I'm good and I want to come in." Then, they'll say, "Alright, fine, but this person is on BiPap and you may want to wear an N-95 before you enter the room." Then, they'll complain about masks. After that, two weeks later, they get the mother/child/husband/wife in the ICU. It's horrific.
What can be done? In my opinion, money's not the driving factor. Get the vaccine. Just do it. It saves lives. It works. Just get the vaccine. The medical community really is burning out and I can assure you that when you eventually hit the hospital for something related to COVID or not you're going to want them on their A-game. They're not going to be with the amount of time this has gone on. Get the vaccine.
Does this mean we need to increase health care costs? Of course not. We need to get rid of the waste, same as with university tuition and adjunct professors not making much.
Ten years ago in a LCOL area, I knew an RN making about that, and they were treated like queens. Was able to work 3 12's, be paid for 40 hrs, and given hotel stay for free, among other things...usually including optional unlimited overtime at double pay.
Then I knew some CNAs or LPN(can't remember which) who made much, much less.
Then it increases automatically to £30,615 after 7 years of experience (and more by then because it's also adjusted up automatically for inflation).
Honestly it's decent out of university... if the hours and the patients aren't too bad. Bear in mind it's a guaranteed MINIMUM (outside of London).
edit: was wondering how difficult it is to promote to the next band that starts above that. other articles say it's doable in two years. nurses read just like the typical HN discussion where companies have to progress developers quickly or they all jump ship a year after graduation. ahah
That would be $160.000 USD per nurse in the USA in one year. Total asset purchases count in tens of thousands per US citizen, and this is plainly visible in asset prices. If it was a priority, subsidizing nurses and "front-line workers" would be a non-issue.
(The "housing market" is more a plan economy and "hope to god the wealth effect/trickle down finally works this time".)
[0] Google.
CNN is highlighting this non-unique situation to dump on a hated "red" state. Will they be there in a week, when "blue" Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii all have bigger numbers than they've ever seen? Those states all social-distanced themselves into ripe fruit, ready for picking by the more contagious Delta variant.
The idea that "infections per capita" trumps vaccination rate when determining future infections rates is just ridiculous.
And claiming this is a hit job on a red state is just as foolish. Arkansas is one of the laggards in vaccinations, and the Delta variant is showing why they're paying the price.
(2) Yes, you're right that vaccinations also lower the amount of "dry wood" available. I try to add those into my estimates but it made too long a description so I left it out. But until 3 months ago it was only a small factor.
(3) More evidence that it's a hit job: the actual breakdown of current COVID cases is not red states vs. blue. It is urban vs. rural...as you'd expect on the upswing of a new conflagration. But the high-rates map is hugely correlated with urbanization, whereas "Trump country" is barely affected yet. That would be the real story, if there was one, which there is not. Have you seen stories on the crises in NYC and Long Island? Maybe I've missed them.
Arkansas does have rising deaths. Florida does have rising deaths. The distinction between the attitudes (and the results) of those states and the "blue" states you mentioned isn't an invention by CNN. (Though CNN may be happy to profit from reporting on that distinction.)
No answers.
Hospitals are designed to run near capacity. It’s reported every winter in the UK that they’re near or over capacity. And outside of winter they’re just as busy. 12 hour shifts, asking ungodly things of staff is nothing new.
Where was your haughty indignation during the last bad flu season?
We have vaccines and had/have mask mandates, yet still staff are giving up. What’s your answer to that?
I understand being frustrated but dealing with people's problems causes themselves is part of the job.
"Where was your haughty indignation during the last bad flu season?"
Show me a flu season that has exerted the same amount of pressure on hospitals and healthcare workers.
My comment does not conflate the two. You’re reaching. Every winter (flu season) exerts extra pressure. It doesn’t take much to push hospitals over the edge.
* no human-to-human transmision
* masks don't work -> masks hurt you -> masks are mandatory
* transmitted by a pangolin -> we don't know what the intermediary was
* it's racist to say it came from a lab -> it probably came from a lab
* restrictions for a few weeks -> restrictions for months, and maybe brought back seasonally
* it will all be over when x % get vaccinated -> we never said vaccines protect from infection, just bad reactions to covid
I mean you can run people ragged for a while, but eventually they will give out on you. It works the same in any profession.
Stripped of the emotional phraseology, I 100% agree with your point. There is something pointedly psychotic about flying rockets just because when your employees are not paid or treated fairly.
But that's just psuedo "capitalism".
No one is talking about "punishing" the ultra-rich, but I would like to see them pay around my percentage tax rate, which is 28% - that's just Federal. I challenge you to find a wealthy person paying anywhere near that.
The top tax rate in the US, decades ago, was 90%. It effectively capped the wealth, preventing entities from becoming more powerful than the government (good luck with that anti-trust action), which had the added benefit of forcing them to reinvest the money into the business and wages.
What are the incentives now? The IRS is gutted. White collar crime, outright fraud. Profit, ruin a company, walk away with untaxed riches. No one is looking.
Which pretty much no one paid because there were so many exceptions to it. Starting with the fact that the top long-term capital gains tax rate was 25%, not 90%.
A lot of those exceptions got eliminated as part of the process of reducing the top marginal rate to the levels we observe now. The current "top" Federal rate is 39.35% on earned income, 40.8% on interest, non-qualified dividends, and short-term capital gains, and 23.8% on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains. That assumes a large enough income that we're not worrying about Social Security in any way, or phaseouts of various sorts or whatnot, but _are_ hitting the extra medicare tax and net investment tax provisions of the ACA. It also assumes that the employer side of the 1.45% Medicare tax is not incident on the employee, which of course it is, but we're comparing "headline" rates.
So specifically for Jeff Bezos, most of whose "income" is presumably long-term capital gains due to AMZN price appreciation, the difference between the "decades ago" utopia you describe and now is the difference between a 25% and 23.8% marginal rate on that long-term capital gain income.
All that said, are you paying a 28% _marginal_ rate, or a 28% _effective_ rate? And are you specifically talking about "wealthy" people or "high-income" people? I ask because last I checked the top 1% of incomes paid something on the order of 25% _average_ Federal tax rate for the last several years (i.e. after the tax cuts a few years ago), and the top 0.1% of incomes paid closer to 27-28%. That's just counting income and payroll taxes, not the incidence of corporate income taxes or whatnot. And again, just Federal; state taxes are a separate story.
It would be good to be able to visualize how tax collections changed over time etc.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57061 and similar for other years (this is data through 2018, but published this year, presumably after they are pretty sure that various delayed tax return filing has happened and whatnot).
This only goes back to 1979, though. If you find something with data older than that I would be interested.
Of interest in the document I linked to is "Exhibit 11. Average Federal Tax Rates, by Income Group, 1979 to 2018" and "Exhibit 12. Average Federal Tax Rates Among Households in the Top 1 Percent, 1979 to 2018", with the latter showing top 0.1% and top 0.01% average tax rates. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57061#data has links to various xls and csv files, including the data tables those graphs are generated from. Note that per "Appendix C" of this document, the tax rates in these graphs include some sort of individualized attribution of corporate income tax incidence and that attribution could easily be quibbled with. The more detailed data tables include more breakdowns into what fraction of tax is attributed to this source, but I didn't find it more finer grained than "top 1%".
I'd like you both to pay the same tax rate too, 0%. You should feel entitled to keep all the money you've earned, so should he.
Bezos doesn't pay the rate you do because his income is lower than yours. It was about 90K/year. His has paper riches, stock. Which is worth nothing until you find a buyer and agree on a price.
It's surprising you mentioned companies not reinvesting in the context of Amazon, which is almost the perfect example of a company reinvesting all of their profits in pursuit of a long term vision. That's why Amazon never posts a profit, they just expand.
But I had to qualify why the current or prevailing idea of capitalism really is just regressing to a revamped version of some hybrid socialist-monarch rule, complete with peasant-aristocracy economics and welfare. I don't think we can escape and think our way out of the oldest forms of governance. And the peasants feel some type of way about it.
Its completely fine to jerk off Bezos and make claims of his angelic presence, totally cool. But mans no astronaut. The space administration agencies around the world sent highly trained, highly specialized people into space to find answers for humanity. Some scientific, some philosophical. So it was televised, the public was told, and mankind was taking a step forward even though we still hate each other because of skin colour. Monkeys though we are, one little step.
And you just claimed Bezos is making who's life better? Developers? Consumers? The folks who pay him money? Can I at least reserve the right to complain in that case?
Hmmm... the Wright brothers flew airplanes "just because" and now we have relatively cheap, ubiquitous air travel. I'm happy to see Bezos and Musk investing in space travel - I think the end-result will be a positive for human civilization.
This is not opening up the dream of space travel for the commoners - it's ultimately a joy ride for people who got rich from a broken, corrupt, and an imbalanced system.
I frankly do not understand HN's glorification of this morbid excess.
You are trolling me hermano. Woe to the Wright Brothers. Bless them. Their work reduced to Alexa's boo thing
Positive for human Civilization? Those few thousand Amazon shareholders are the beneficiaries on humanity's behalf? Bless them too. I suppose we can make a few more millionaires get into the 9 figure club. Trickle down economics right?
At least for now, we can laugh because their rockets are too impotent for orbit.
Going further, make society difficult to navigate for people unwilling to be vaccinated or wear masks and our frontline workers will have much better lives.
Why are we compromising our quality of life, national security, and economic well-being to cater to these sorts? Just the economic damage alone from an indefinite pandemic seems like more than enough of a free market incentive to eliminate their negative impact on everything around them.
Most unvaccinated are probably already without health insurance. Vaccination essentially follows socio-economic status, and has the lowest density in blacks and hispanics.
Going door-to-door, or "vaccination buses", or things of the line might help.
Some interesting statistics on the situation.
There really isn't any other option than vaccination given that coronaviruses can reach up to 35% fatality (1). We are extremely lucky right now that the current fatality rate (IFR) is hovering around 1%. That could change.
Or if there is another option, what is it? We are a year and a half into this thing with no end in sight. And it has already demonstrated it can mutate past herd immunity for those who have already had it or who have been vaccinated. But it's also pretty clear that those who have been vaccinated are more likely to survive by a huge margin.
I'm a huge believer in letting people destroy themselves. But I don't believe in letting them destroy everyone else. I'm weird I guess.
1. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
The paper you cite is about a hypothetical. Stop with the fear mongering.
And you're misrepresenting the paper. It doesn't claim 35% fatality, it cites the 35% fatality of MERS, a distantly related coronavirus and the 10% fatality of the original SARS pandemic, a closer related virus (1), both mostly settled science, as potential upper bounds of what variants could emerge if we don't get this under control.
Viruses evolve to do one thing: make more virus particles. If there is a gain of function that increases the fatality rate then so be it. Usually they become less deadly because that makes them spread more effectively but there are exceptions. It's comforting to assert that it's impossible for a virus to evolve to become more deadly but it's also false.
How can you interpret what I wrote to say that a new virus or variant certainly won't cause a higher fatality rate? Anything can happen at any time. For all we know, a new virus could become prevalent. Typically though, we base public policy based on things that have already happened and the likelihood of future things.
There is little reason to believe COVID will evolve into something more deadly. In general viruses rarely make this evolutionary step. Pathogens do not gain reproductive advantage by killing their host. This is why zoonotic pathogens are so dangerous ... when such a pathogen crosses over, they can go from causing no damage to their original host (bats) to becoming very deadly in the context of a human body. Indeed, if history is any guide, endemic human viruses eventually evolve to be mild infections or beneficial (there are theories that placental development is due to the presence and integration of ancient viruses in mammalian DNA).
Given that, unlike the flu which has natural reservoirs in birds and crosses over very frequently to humans, COVID does not seem to be bouncing between animal hosts, it is highly unlikely based on every understanding I have of pathogenic evolution that the virus will become more deadly. Indeed, delta variant, while more infectious (as to be expected) is not as deadly.
> . It doesn't claim 35% fatality, it cites the 35% fatality of MERS, a distantly related coronavirus
Except, MERS and SARS-Cov1 are zoonotic viruses, whereas the COVID variants are human evolved and thus unlikely to become more pathogenic. Zoonotic viruses evolve to be less deadly in their hosts. The zoonotic crossover is a chance event and given the viruses were evolved to not kill bats, they had not been exposed to any selective pressure to not kill humans. Now they are exposed to that pressure so we will see the fruits of that selection.
Also, as you point out, MERS is only distantly related. If this pandemic were MERS with a higher infection rate, then it would have been more concerning to begin with, but of course then it would also have evolved faster to be less pathogenic because the selection pressure would be stronger. But it's not. Even the earliest estimates (again, with assuredly bad data) were a fatality rate of 7-8%. They've gone drastically down, by orders of magnitude, and the new variants will continue to drop that.
It is good new variants are being created. The higher infection rate + lower death rate will lead to quicker herd immunity against a broader spectra of Sars-COV2 family viruses.
But the only evolutionary imperative is more virus particles. If becoming less deadly is the best path, the virus becomes less deadly. But if increased fatality comes along with making more virus particles, it will get deadlier. But don't take it from me:
"But there’s no obvious evolutionary advantage for SARS-CoV-2 to reduce its virulence, because it pays little price for occasionally killing people: It spreads readily from infected people who are not yet feeling sick, and even from those who may never show symptoms of illness." - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-viruses-ev...
>COVID does not seem to be bouncing between animal hosts
Um.... No...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wild-us-d...
You make antibodies to all kinds of things. You likely have antibodies to cat viruses that have no chance of infecting you.
Again, stop the fear mongering.
> they always evolve to become less deadly.
As with any 'rule', there are exceptions, but that is the general idea yes. There is little need to worry about future variants.
Can Sars cov2 cross to another animal, mutate, and come back to humans with a higher death rate? Certainly, but that's not what we're talking about with these variants.
You're looking at a Nobel Prize here if you're right, take your best shot sport!
1. https://www.livescience.com/1918-flu-variant-deadlier-later-...
> As with any 'rule', there are exceptions, but that is the general idea yes. There is little need to worry about future variants.
This is false, and has already happened with COVID-19's delta variant.
"in addition to being more contagious, the delta variant likely increases the risk of severe disease and hospitalization, compared with the original strain." - https://www.npr.org/2021/07/29/1022580439/a-cdc-internal-rep...
Hold on, hospitalization and severe disease and death are completely different things. This is a disingenuous use of this article.
I mean, mono is severe (tired for months potentially), but not deadly. A burst appendix requires hospitalization and is a severe medical emergency, but is not deadly in the developed world. We can go on...
So you're claiming hospitalization, severe illness, and death are not correlated at all w/r to prior of COVID-19 diagnosis? How does that work? Do you have the numbers to back this up? I'd love to see them.
There might be some progress if the authorities somehow "repented" and became trustworthy. There's probably a lot going on at the local level where the communication and organization is happening that I can't speak to.
At the moment, this seems to be coming to an end in western Europe. The majority of unvaccinated are young, and many have had covid. Delta variant is spreading covertly without causing much symptoms or illness, so few people are getting tests. If it can't be stopped, it might be preferable that it spreads during the summer. No one knows what happens this winter, but the outlook seems good.
Also drunk drivers who wreck?
Also people who abuse drugs?
Also people without documentation?
Also those who don't accept blood letting?
Also people who make bad decisions?
But smoke all you want, they already factor that into health insurance costs. Drive drunk all you want, but don't whine if you get caught and they throw you in jail and take away your car and license. WTF undocumented sorts? You're all over the map IMO.
Do you think a person who sustained an injury while they were intoxicated and needs medical treatment "get zero health insurance coverage?" Would it matter if they were at fault?
Do you think a person who made a poor life decision "get zero health insurance coverage?"
> What's with all this negativity?
My questions aren't negative or positive. Their purpose is to think through the idea you proffered. If you didn't wish for people to think through this, why would one enter a comment?
2. Does their poor life decision harm others or just themselves? If the former (say a mass shooting), yes. But I support your right to self harm though I'd hope someone cared enough about you to dissuade you.
You asked. I'm not against people refusing masks and vaccination if they're willing to isolate themselves, I'm against them imposing their poor decisions on everything else or it's a tragedy of the commons IMO. I don't expect anyone to share my views, they're mine.
Do you think hospitals should refuse the uninsured?
> if they're willing to isolate themselves
On what basis do you think people who refuse masks and vaccination isolate themselves instead of other people?
To what lengths would you advocate for compliance verification with regards to vaccination and masking?
Why is the right to dodge vaccination and masks so important, so absolutely vital, so incredibly on target that we risk the destruction of the Republic itself if we mandate them? Do you also support my right to throw hand grenades into rooms full of people I don't like?
This nation was founded during a smallpox and variola academic where our founding father George Washington forced vaccination upon his soldiers (1). But mandating vaccination against the current pandemic is unamerican? How does that work?
Equating the two is the basis of your argument? And yet anyone disagreeing is spreading disinformation and must be silenced?
(Not accusing you of the latter personally, but others who sound like you have continued thus)
Blaming the hesitant and making histrionic claims is like trying to convince me of some eugenic racist theory, where it's just a fast filter that repels everyone intelligent enough to disagree with you and leaves you with a remainder of easily fooled people you can exploit for political ends. Facts in this context are meaningless other than as signals of what side you're on.
If someone wants to take the risk of volunteering for the vaccine control group in a global pandemic, I wish them luck. Scapegoating turns it into a political problem where everyone thinks they have a meaningful opinion, which I can see the appeal of. But appeal and truth are very different things.
But I support them being the control group for the vaccine as well. We don't need that control group anymore we have plenty of data but hey it's a free country. But that choice comes with responsibilities that they don't want to accept and that's where I have a problem. If you're going to sequester yourself away and harm no one but yourself, good for you.
Individuals not getting vaccine shots are not endangering just their lives, they are endangering the Public Health. They are putting unnecessary stress on the Health Care system and allowing themselves to be the incubator of the next varent that prolongs this Pandemic.
We're not Scapegoating anyone for this Pandemic because the people who choose not to get vaccinated are driving and causing this Pandemic. They really are to blame for the Pandemic in its current form.
BTW: Public Health > Individual Freedom
It's a false conflict and a false dichotomy. The quality of thes arguments are self defeatingly poor, which is the point, because the people making them need others to blame. Hysteria causes hesitation. Solving the problem and merely keeping it in the air with what would be hate speech in any other context to manage it are conflicting goals.
However, in a private medical system, there's no reason for this. If an unvaccinated person can pay, they ought to be treated. It's their money.
https://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Resources/Forms-Reports-and-Other-...
I'm not saying that's particularly ethical behavior and they wouldn't get my business if I could help it, but if they choose to behave otherwise, they risk delivering suboptimal shareholder value, no?
Yes... the ultimate responsible party is the patient, not the insurance company. It makes no sense to deny Americans the right to use the hospital because the hospitals are private entities contracting with their patients, not a government service.
Insurance is an ancillary concern and of concern only to two private parties, not the government.
And if the hospital is filled to capacity maximizing revenue already, why can't a free market entity preferentially treat the vaccinated who will pose a lesser danger to their employees and thus result in lower employee burnout and sick pay not mention higher gross margin?
This leaves the insurance companies free to pursue their mission of maximizing profitability as much as they possibly can to deliver shareholder value and we all win, no?
It also leaves entrepreneurial sorts like yourself the opportunity to open a bespoke hospital for anti-vaxxers and mask-deniers who, if they have the money, will pay top $$$ because the alternative given they are at your door is an eternal dirt nap.
Seems like an American Success story in the making to me.
All the billions handed out to the vaccine companies and the propaganda machines, but no investment in increasing hospital capacity. These mega corporations that run the hospitals, they prey on people's caring capacity. Nurses haven't already left the field because nothing else pays a living wage and they have 60k in student debt to pay off.
Let's just blame the unvaccinated though. That ensures Pfizer keeps buying ads on CNN.
>but no investment in increasing hospital capacity
Agree, where did all the billions go? The most expensive healthcare on the planet and we can't find the money to scale and expand a year and a half later.
Health insurers know their time in the crosshairs is coming which is why they're buying up pharmacy groups and providers, to give their offerings a sheen of actual care.
Politicians get to use them as scapegoats, and there is no way voters in the US accept taxpayer funded healthcare. Someone has to be the bad guy and allocate the limited amount of healthcare resources available, and I see no reason why the existing relationship of government makes the rules allocating the care, but MCO implements them and takes the heat would change.
Traders also seem to think the same given the gains in MCO market caps. Also, all the MCOs have profit margins of 5% or less, so this game of punting responsibility costs relatively little in the grand scheme of things.
At the root of it all is a demand for healthcare that far outstrips supply, and so these obfuscations are useful in making sure certain socioeconomic classes are able to attain a greater share of it than others.
That being said, hospitals have not been overwhelmed in the United States. The emergency hospitals we did build mainly went unused.
America had more ER capacity than I think any other country on the planet. Perhaps due to a lack of preventative medicine? I don't know, but it shouldn't be due to lack of ER capacity that this is happening.
ICU capacity per capita is larger in Germany and Austria at least.
Source: https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/en/data-insights/intensive-...
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1553-2712....
Doubling healthcare capacity roughly lasts for about 3 extra days if no other measure is in place.
I'm all for improving healthcare, in the US or otherwise, but you just can't fire up and destroy healthcare resources like it's your k8s cluster.
Which trials demonstrated this?
...
"Among 42,094 evaluable ≥12-year-olds without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, 77 COVID-19 cases with onset ≥7 days post-dose 2 were observed through the data cut-off (March 13, 2021) among vaccine recipients and 850 among placebo recipients, corresponding to 91.3% VE (95% CI [89.0-93.2]; Table 2). Among 44,486 evaluable participants, irrespective of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, 81 COVID-19 cases were observed among vaccine and 873 among placebo recipients, corresponding to 91.1% VE (95% CI [88.8-93.0]).
In the all-available population with evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection based on positive baseline N-binding antibody test, 2 COVID-19 cases were observed post-dose 1 among vaccine and 7 among placebo recipients. In participants with evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection by positive nucleic acid amplification test at baseline, no difference in COVID-19 cases was observed between vaccine (n=10) and placebo (n=9) recipients (Table S5). COVID-19 was less frequent among placebo recipients with positive N-binding antibodies at study entry (7/542; ~1.3% attack rate) than among those without evidence of infection at study entry (1015/21,521; ~4.7% attack rate), indicating ~72.6% protection by previous infection."
...
Efficacy peaked at 96.2% during the interval from 7 days to <2 months post-dose 2, and declined gradually to 83.7% from 4 months post-dose 2 to the data cut-off, an average decline of ~6% every 2 months. Ongoing follow-up is needed to understand persistence of the vaccine effect over time, the need for booster dosing, and timing of such a dose. Most participants who initially received placebo have now been immunized with BNT162b2, ending the placebo-controlled part of the study. Nevertheless, ongoing observation of participants through up to 2 years in this study, together with real-world effectiveness data,14-17 will determine whether a booster is likely to be beneficial after a longer interval. Booster trials to evaluate safety and immunogenicity of BNT162b2 are underway to prepare for this possibility.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v...
From [1] page 13:
> Efficacy is being assessed throughout a participant’s follow-up in the study through surveillance for potential cases of COVID-19. If, at any time, a participant develops acute respiratory illness, an illness visit occurs. Assessments for illness visits include a nasal (midturbinate) swab, which is tested at a central laboratory using a reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test (e.g., Cepheid; FDA authorized under EUA), or other sufficiently validated nucleic acid amplification-based test (NAAT), to detect SARS-CoV-2.
So, if you didn't present symptoms of an acute respiratory infection, you weren't PCR tested in the trial. Since we know that the vast majority of PCR positive tests come from asymptomatic and very mild cases, this trial can't be used to draw any conclusions about it's ability to prevent infection.
Here's another interesting bit from page 42:
> Among 3410 total cases of suspected but unconfirmed COVID-19 in the overall study population, 1594 occurred in the vaccine group vs. 1816 in the placebo group. Suspected COVID-19 cases that occurred within 7 days after any vaccination were 409 in the vaccine group vs. 287 in the placebo group. It is possible that the imbalance in suspected COVID-19 cases occurring in the 7 days postvaccination represents vaccine reactogenicity with symptoms that overlap with those of COVID-19. Overall though, these data do not raise a concern that protocol-specified reporting of suspected, but unconfirmed COVID-19 cases could have masked clinically significant adverse events that would not have otherwise been detected
The document doesn't outline what 'suspected' cases are.
Here is the paragraph that specific states data is limited around transmission (page 48):
> Vaccine effectiveness against transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Data are limited to assess the effect of the vaccine against transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from individuals who are infected despite vaccination. Demonstrated high efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 may translate to overall prevention of transmission in populations with high enough vaccine uptake, though it is possible that if efficacy against asymptomatic infection were lower than efficacy against symptomatic infection, asymptomatic cases in combination with reduced mask-wearing and social distancing could result in significant continued transmission. Additional evaluations including data from clinical trials and from vaccine use post-authorization will be needed to assess the effect of the vaccine in preventing virus shedding and transmission, in particular in individuals with asymptomatic infection.
Now, this is if you take the studies at face value, which I don't. We know Pfizer and the FDA are full of frauds and grifters.
Sadly most don’t want to consider it and just parrot what they’ve been programmed to by the television. The worse part is they think they are righteous or whatever. So delusional.
Instead we see the opposite, which has little to do with the best interests of the citizens, including the funneling of tax dollars to Pfizer and the rest. The parent comment highlights that and explains what’s actually going on, despite the narrative provided by <compliant> ”experts.”
A life is in your hands. I’ve witnessed and lived through both scenarios. The majority of the time people want the pills.
I am curious how you would solve for modern human ailments. Would you impose a government sanctioned food protocol? Would you let people die who refuse to increase their quality food intake and exercise?
Yes, however it starts with improving the food preparation options and raising food quality. There is horrible stuff in our food - stuff that is outlawed in Europe because it is a known toxin.
Something has clearly gone wrong in the US and it’s a pretty patronizing position you have taken to put the blame entirely on the public. The government institutions supposed to be watching out for this stuff have failed, and are likely corrupt.
> Would you impose a government sanctioned food protocol?
Nah, not needed. This is fixed by a PR campaign and some cultural adjustments.
For example, for some reason the media has been promoting “body positivity” in recent years and encouraging unhealthy lifestyles. Those people who actually bought into that idea were set up in a worse position when this kicked off.
Probably not promoting bad ideas like that would be a good place to start. The commies will whine that it’s “fascist” or not “big hearted” whatever, though.
—-
In the end, I guess only people who can see through the lies will survive, and that’s just the game we’re playing now. That doesn’t mean that we should accept living a society where this is normal.
Regarding capacity, hospitals are designed to run at 90% capacity -- the state literally limits the number of hospitals in regions to ensure this is the case (i.e. hospitals stay profitable). ICU capacity is often at 100% and if you know anyone working in ICUs (I have multiple family members) this isn't new.
That being said, they will increase turn-over by reducing their current care level, etc.
Also should note, I can't help but feel this focus on Florida, Texas, Arkansas, etc is because they have banned masks and vaccine mandates.
If you look at actual hospitalizations and more importantly death rates you see something different: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...
Anyway, the link you posted shows NY, NJ, MA, and RI had the worst deaths per 100k. We already knew they got hit hard with the more fatal variant early on, when we didn't know about dexamethasone or turning patients on their front side, nevermind using vaccines to greatly halt severe cases. Furthermore, these are dense and urbanized areas, demographically more susceptible. So your call to check this site isn't that helpful in the current fourth delta wave.
Now we're seeing 98% of deaths in the unvaccinated, according to NPRs recent article. This is a fourth wave, and it is categorically different than the other three because it's mostly hitting the unvaccinated. This is obviously a self-induced injury that our culture has inflicted.
But this is in the past (or cumulative over the whole pandemic), the news article is talking about now.
If you look at current numbers, you can see where hospitalizations are now. See https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
FL and AR seem to be hotspots to me
It's the difference between getting surprised by a deadly bug, and having state governments that don't give a crap despite being forewarned.
Delta is here in my blue state and the neighboring ones, cases here have gone up, but people aren't dying. Because of high vaccination rates it's not news here the way it was last year and we're staying open.
You're inventing this "dishonesty."
Education workers already get over 4 months of leave every single year built into the job, they are almost unfireable for any infractions. Yet they want higher salaries even though in national stats they already make over the median salary by quite a bit. (yes there are bad pay areas)
Hospital workers are making a killing right now on par with crazy dotcom boom tech salaries. Due to the already in place massive bonus systems they have. Yet they are walking off for extra bonuses? Sounds spoiled to me.
Bracing for what will likely be the most downvoted thing I have ever written.
What a bizarre characterization.
They're walking off because they're working in hellish conditions, watching people die with no resources left to help them.