The Politics of Covid 19, mask wearing and the vaccination process

[Zaxxon]

If there is no harm and no benefit, why not just allow it to those who are willing to pay? I get not promoting it, but forbidding people from getting it seems odd.

Yeah, my point exactly. It's not like we're talking about school/business closures or indoor dining bans or social distancing or masking. The fact that there might not be a benefit to an additional bivalent booster seems like a really, really poor reason to prohibit people from getting it.

Especially when the potential benefit - less severe COVID cases and possibly less death - is so significant.

It just seems again that we are fundamentally unable to perform rational cost/benefit analysis.

We had this exact conversation here back in January, I believe it was. I'd love another booster.

[Kraken]

I honestly don't think I've seen a single mask since last year. I don't mean not many, I mean zero.

In any public setting here you'll see at least a few masked people. Maybe they're vulnerable, or maybe they live with someone who is, or maybe (like me last month) they're sick themselves and trying not to spread their germs. It raises a few eyebrows but is still just a personal choice, especially among those of us who have earned wrinkles and gray hair. I don't mind being in that minority.

[LordMortis]

I was traveling for work last week, sitting in the terminal at PDX noting a bunch of people coughing and sneezing. It made me start thinking that, given my family is heading out on a long-awaited cruise for spring break next week and are six months or so out from our last COVID booster, we should probably bite the bullet and get another booster today. I wasn't excited about the notion since every time I get the shot, I feel like death warmed over for a day and a half, but heading out on a ship with 4K others of various vaccination and COVID-denialism status, seemed like a good idea.

But when we showed up for the shot today, we were told we were not eligible because we already had a bivalent booster. Apparently, once you get that, you are officially done. No more boosters for you, despite the fact that efficacy apparently drops once you're 3-6 months out from the last shot.

The pharmacist sympathized and noted that it's a CDC-thing. She said she's turning away a lot of people seeking additional boosters now that we're 6+ months out from the release of the bivalent booster, but she said there's nothing she or anyone else can do until the CDC updates guidance.

Does this make any sense?

Six + months out surprises me. I got my bivalent on day 1 and I'm just hitting six months. Emotionally, I really feel like I need a booster but I'm not an expert. I still mask and largely isolate. I am the last of maskers anywhere I go, except for the grocer, wherein there a few of us. But then I am immunosuppressed and tick all of the high risk notes except diabetes and 65+... and still never had the first bout of COVID and got through it OK...

I totally empathize with the reasoning that an additional dose might benefit us. I mean they plead for you to get a flu shot every year and flu is not a top three killer in the US.

[malchior]

It just seems again that we are fundamentally unable to perform rational cost/benefit analysis.

There is a good chance that they are doing it for rational reasons. I've gotten a crash course in vaccine capacity in the last couple of weeks. It turns out there is that only x amount of capacity to make vaccines of all types. To boil it down a bit, this is possibly a decision considering public health, manufacturing capacity, and the related economics.

What I've learned recently is that creating new capacity requires extremely long lead times due to all the necessary regulation and limited expertise. In addition, a critical component - the vaccine adjuvants - have a very finite supply. The creation of additional adjuvants to expand supply also happens to be one of the slowest processes in all of medicine. So my albeit limited take is that this decision making on timing is part of a prioritization effort against that capacity. They may have settled on a framework that minimizes death first, hospitalizations second, and general wellness a distant third. It is frustrating but we can't assume it is completely irrational.

[gilraen]

What I've learned recently is that creating new capacity requires extremely long lead times due to all the necessary regulation and limited expertise. In addition, a critical component - the vaccine adjuvants - have a very finite supply. The creation of additional adjuvants to expand supply also happens to be one of the slowest processes in all of medicine. So my albeit limited take is that this decision making on timing is part of a prioritization effort against that capacity. They may have settled on a framework that minimizes death first, hospitalizations second, and general wellness a distant third. It is frustrating but we can't assume it is completely irrational.

Except all but one COVID vaccines are not adjuvanted (all but Novavax). Also, there's still enough supply of the vaccine for now where there's still more concern that it will expire and have to be thrown out than concern that there won't be enough to go around for everyone. The decision is almost entirely political.

[Kraken]

Is it mostly political, though? These vaccines don't prevent Covid; they reduce its severity. If the death/disability rate among the infected isn't rising, what's the value in additional vaccinations (especially going into spring, when we expect the infection rate to drop)?

[Max Peck]

Locally, at least, I'm not so sure that bad outcomes aren't rising. The most recent CBC report on Ottawa's COVID trends states that hospitalizations and outbreaks are increasing.

[LordMortis]

Is it mostly political, though? These vaccines don't prevent Covid; they reduce its severity. If the death/disability rate among the infected isn't rising, what's the value in additional vaccinations (especially going into spring, when we expect the infection rate to drop)?

Around here, the opposite happens. As spring comes along, so to does spring fever. People gather much more and shed their natural isolation. They foold themselves into thinking everything is warm and awesome and start drinking outdoors and then toward sunset they're still drinking and go inside in groups to get warm. Count on infection rates going up through April at least. The time to get vaccinated was three weeks ago to have your immunity more or less boosted coming into last week. I expect to see rates start trending up in two to three weeks from now, if we're still reporting anything approaching the way have in the previous three years. Three years. Is it any wonder people have moved on? Sucks to be me.

[malchior]

What I've learned recently is that creating new capacity requires extremely long lead times due to all the necessary regulation and limited expertise. In addition, a critical component - the vaccine adjuvants - have a very finite supply. The creation of additional adjuvants to expand supply also happens to be one of the slowest processes in all of medicine. So my albeit limited take is that this decision making on timing is part of a prioritization effort against that capacity. They may have settled on a framework that minimizes death first, hospitalizations second, and general wellness a distant third. It is frustrating but we can't assume it is completely irrational.

Except all but one COVID vaccines are not adjuvanted (all but Novavax). Also, there's still enough supply of the vaccine for now where there's still more concern that it will expire and have to be thrown out than concern that there won't be enough to go around for everyone. The decision is almost entirely political.

Interesting. Thanks for adding in more context. My wife's company is being pushed hard to increase adjuvant capacity by 'big name pharmaceutical' and one of the local chiefs said it had to do with strains introduced by COVID. And no...they don't make Novavax. But that fits in a general pattern of people saying shit that isn't 100% true at her firm.

[Smoove_B]

Timely enough - and a reminder that we're back to politics (as it relates to being ready for the next pandemic):

“Normal led to this.” @edyong209 said in a 2022 talk examining the US’s poor pandemic performance. Yet, the discussion of the “next pandemic” continues to center narrowly on our biological (and to a lesser extent public health) capabilities and not our social vulnerabilities.

Most working-age people who died in 2020 were low-paid essential workers, and many workers carried the virus into multigenerational households w/high-risk elders. Yet, workplace protections remain conspicuously absent from “next pandemic” conversations.

Nursing homes represented up to 80% of total state COVID deaths in 2020. Yet, many nursing homes not only have unacceptably low booster and treatment coverage to weather COVID but also are not the focus of future pandemic planning conversations.

Prisons were not only home to explosive and deadly epidemics but also served as what @_Eric_Reinhart has called epidemic engines—they drove transmission into high-risk communities. Yet, there’s persistent neglect of prisons and other congregate settings.

Equity remains a glaring omission of “next pandemic” conversation despite large and persistent COVID disparities. Yet, the groups and communities hit first and hardest by COVID remain an afterthought of future pandemic discussions

Report after report has demonstrated that the lack of policies such as paid leave continues to undermine public health, and yet the need for these policies is virtually absent from discussions on how to plan for future threats.

The US remained ranked the “most prepared country” in the 2021 Global Health Security Index. Absent understanding of the social, and not simply biological lessons, of COVID and vigorous effort to build a better “normal,” it will lead to this, if not worse, all over again.

I think this is what has me all shook. It's become painfully obvious now that everything is (and has been) focused on maintaining "normal" for the average. People on the fringes? They can suffer - as long as we all get to keep doing whatever it is we want to do. It's very clearly been that way all along, but I guess I never saw or felt it as obviously as I have during the last 3 years. That there's still such a strong push to go back to this is what I am resisting with every fiber of my being.

[Isgrimnur]

And the next one might not spare our youth and military.

[Blackhawk]

And the next one will likely see many of use dead center in the 'expendable' range.

[Pyperkub]

Is it the death of the 4th wall? Is it COVID-19 politics? Maybe a little of both...

Hey there, @nytimes and @nytopinion, these two pieces published under your masthead are fundamentally at odds. Which of them is true, and will you correct the record for the one that is not true? Hint: The one on the left.

Of note:

It's important to recognize that this is not a matter of competing opinions. Stephens rests his entire case on the study that Tufekci reports was fundamentally mischaracterized by the study's own authors. Stephens' column rests on literal misinformation.

The literal quote from the Cochrane Study's Authors:

Last week, the Cochrane Library issued a statement that was a direct rejoinder to Stephens and others:

Many commentators have claimed that a recently updated Cochrane Review shows that ‘masks don’t work’, which is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation.

It would be accurate to say that the review examined whether interventions to promote mask wearing help to slow the spread of respiratory viruses, and that the results were inconclusive. Given the limitations in the primary evidence, the review is not able to address the question of whether mask-wearing itself reduces people’s risk of contracting or spreading respiratory viruses.

[Max Peck]

Locally, at least, I'm not so sure that bad outcomes aren't rising. The most recent CBC report on Ottawa's COVID trends states that hospitalizations and outbreaks are increasing.

One week later...

High levels, mixed trends in latest Ottawa COVID updates

Wastewater and test positivity rise, hospitalizations and outbreaks don't

Recent developments:

• Ottawa's COVID-19 numbers are trending in different directions.
• COVID levels in the city are generally high, says its health unit.
• Six more people with COVID have died in the region.

The latest

Ottawa Public Health (OPH) says COVID-19 indicators are generally high. Some, but not all of them are rising after weeks of stability.

Experts recommend people wear masks indoors and, in Ontario, in the days after having COVID symptoms. Staying home when sick and staying up to date with COVID vaccines can also help protect vulnerable people.

Non-COVID respiratory virus levels are generally low and/or seasonal.

[Smoove_B]

Is this where we're talking about how bad the Democrats are? No?

Congress is on track to pass a GOP-led resolution ending the COVID national emergency — and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is indicating to colleagues that President Biden is expected to sign it into law.

Why it matters: The White House had planned to end the national emergency on May 11, and had warned that an earlier end could create "wide-ranging chaos" in the health care system.

Biden signing the resolution would give the U.S. government one less month to roll back extended deadlines for filing claims for COBRA health plans and flexible spending accounts. It also would put an early end to relaxed requirements for Medicare and Medicaid programs.

[Roman]

Well it finally happened. I got Covid last Tuesday - mild symptoms. Aches/pains/congestion was all.
Still positive and more milder symptoms today 1 week later.

Managed to dodge it for 3+ years - I guess it was finally my time.

[malchior]

Is this where we're talking about how bad the Democrats are? No?

This isn't just about the Democrats. It is the leadership caste. This is a broad-based performative tantrum. Biden set an end date to give time for the system to adjust. After all OMB said it'd have excess impact on the system to end the emergency. The date was at least a target to end this and give time for healthcare systems to adjust to the reduced spend. Unfortunately that wasn't enough compromise for the many grandstanders in Congress...so they are voting to cut it short by ... check notes ... a month. Such a serious nation.

[Smoove_B]

This should be an interesting one to follow - Hollywood Covid protocols ending 5/12. Looks like they tried to line it up with the announced ending of the Emergency Declaration, but since that was fast-tracked, hooray for everyone:

The transition, they noted, includes the following conditions:

1. Grandfathering: Projects in production before May 11, 2023, which had already established a mandatory vaccination policy in Zone A, may keep that policy for the duration of that production. For episodic projects, this applies only to the season in production before May 11, and not for subsequent seasons.
2. Intimate Photography: SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP have reached an understanding on a testing system for performers involved in intimate scenes to ensure their safety and well-being.
3. Additional Paid COVID -19 Sick Days: The unions have secured an additional five paid COVID-19 sick days for all employees through the end of the year.

As as been pointed out numerous times, Hollywood was operating on a set of enhanced testing, monitoring and air quality improvement protocols - knowing that any shutdowns were insanely costly. I guess we'll see how things are after their protocols are removed. I'm sure it won't be at all like all the concert tour dates from major artists that keep getting cancelled.

[Smoove_B]

Allow me to bump a dead thread. Earlier this month (4/3) the Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center in CA lifted their mask requirements - it's totally been a popular thing happening nationwide. You might want to sit down, but something not-great just happened:

Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center has reinstated a temporary mask mandate after more than a dozen hospital workers and patients at the medical center tested positive for the coronavirus this week, officials confirmed.

Kaiser officials issued a written statement stating that doctors and staff must wear masks while providing direct care to patients in the Santa Rosa hospital and emergency department. There are approximately 3,500 health care workers at the facility.

...

The outbreak came as California tallied an average of 1,330 new daily COVID-19 cases, or about 3.3 per 100,000 residents on Thursday — roughly the same figures as a month earlier. The state’s seven-day rolling coronavirus test positivity rate, which tracks the percentage of lab test results that are positive for the virus, ticked up slightly to 5.4%, with an average of 10 people dying each day due to the virus.

[Max Peck]

That's a nothingburger. Those people were clearly in the hospital with COVID, not because of COVID, and we all know that doesn't count.

[YellowKing]

We just lifted our hospital mask requirements as well.

[Isgrimnur]

Florida surgeon general altered key findings in study on Covid-19 vaccine safety

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo personally altered a state-driven study about Covid-19 vaccines last year to suggest that some doses pose a significantly higher health risk for young men than had been established by the broader medical community, according to a newly obtained document.

Ladapo’s changes, released as part of a public records request, presented the risks of cardiac death to be more severe than previous versions of the study. He later used the final document in October to bolster disputed claims that Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were dangerous to young men.

[LawBeefaroni]

We just lifted our hospital mask requirements as well.

Came down today for us.

Although still in place in high-risk patient areas and cancer treatment.. May remain permanent there.

[Kraken]

My niece's hospital just announced their mask repeal with an ad campaign about how glad we all are to see smiling faces again. To be fair, the nurse in the ad had a smile to die for.

[Daehawk]

Wonder when I can get the latest booster?

[Defiant]

Wonder when I can get the latest booster?

IIUC: If you haven't gotten the bivalent booster before, you should be able to get the booster. For those who've already gotten it, I think only those who are 65+ or who are immunocompromised are eligible to get a second bivalent booster (at least 4 months after the first). Talk with your doctor.

[LawBeefaroni]

My niece's hospital just announced their mask repeal with an ad campaign about how glad we all are to see smiling faces again. To be fair, the nurse in the ad had a smile to die for.

I will say that I walked into my building without a mask for the first time in over 3 years. Felt kind of nice.

[Smoove_B]

Maybe this is too far in the weeds for the casual reader, but it's making noise in my profession:

The Surgeon General’s newly issued advisory on loneliness contains a feature on COVID-19 that’s identified as a “call-out” in the table of contents. It’s just one page on the impacts of the pandemic on loneliness

Text in full:

The Surgeon General’s newly issued advisory on loneliness contains a feature on COVID-19 that’s identified as a “call-out” in the table of contents. It’s just one page on the impacts of the pandemic on loneliness. The online preamble to the advisory, just noting en passant, seems to borrow from the private sector in its approach to appealing to a reader’s curiosity. This is the “call-out,” titled “Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

It’s a remarkable account of the way “connection” was impeded by “lockdowns and stay-at-home orders,” cancellation of important events, and online education—but not sickness, death, or disability. In fact, this text somehow doesn’t really even dwell on the reality that this was an epidemiological event. Only a brief mention of health care workers. No word about how failed federal and state pandemic responses could have exacerbated loneliness and feelings of abandonment. The text is voiced in the past perfect, as if the pandemic truly were over—and its coda is “While profoundly disruptive in many ways…”

Those many ways apparently exclude the deepest actual impacts—lost life, health, loved ones. Not even life expectancy gets a mention here. t’s interesting, too, that this revisionist history contains an appeal for volunteerism as a solution to pandemic-induced loneliness—*not* federal intervention or even organized disease prev efforts! Volunteering is a neoliberal favorite (ref GHW Bush “1,000 points of light”). This apolitical account somewhat retreads Margaret Thatcher’s notorious comment about “society”: “…There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.”

Maybe others will disagree—but I barely recognize the pandemic that’s described here, with its myriad silver linings, blandly described emotions, and lack of official malfeasance and misdirection. There's something disrespectfully glib about the way this report pivots.

[Zarathud]

The depression and isolation from having family members die is real. The depression and isolation from being scared about dying prematurely is also real.

Doing better and having better vaccine/mask/safety compliance would have helped.

[Isgrimnur]

Any failures by the powers-that-be are actually failings of you as individuals. /s

[LordMortis]

That's both true and a misleading narrative presented. The PIC are empowered by the mass of individuals and reflect their will and as has been stated for three years running, individuals working against the prevention of the spread of disease contribute to the spread of disease. It's 12 by a million monkeys.

[Smoove_B]

Not COVID-19 (directly) related, but definitely political:

This is astonishing. Between 2019 and 2023, the % of Republicans who said parents should be able to put their kids in public school without the MMR vaccine (even if it creates health risks for others), more than doubled, from 20% to 42%.

We're headed down a bad, bad path.

Again, this was trending PRIOR to 2020 but the events surrounding COVID-19 likely accelerated the shift in beliefs.

[hitbyambulance]

That's both true and a misleading narrative presented. The PIC are empowered by the mass of individuals and reflect their will and as has been stated for three years running, individuals working against the prevention of the spread of disease contribute to the spread of disease. It's 12 by a million monkeys.

i feel this is one of those things that will become glaringly obvious when it's presented as 'history' sometime in the future, but all-too-convenient to ignore in the present.

[Smoove_B]

Oh, that's so weird:

With less than two weeks before the General Assembly's statutory deadline, a new round of COVID infections in the state Senate has prompted legislative leaders to order mandatory masking for staff, elected officials and the public on the third floor of the State Capitol building as well as the fourth floor Senate galleries.

Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, made the announcement late Monday night in an email to Capitol reporters, citing "a number of positive COVID tests" in the Senate. Daily rapid COVID tests will be performed on senators and staff, and senators who test negative will be allowed to take off masks on the Senate floor.

[Smoove_B]

I thought we had a dumpster fire CNN thread, but I guess not? Either way, this goes here because apparently the President of CNN is a COVID death conspiracy theorist:

There's this weird belief seeping into elite sentiment, expressed here by CNN President Chris Licht, that we should've somehow gotten over COVID after a few weeks

It's weird how there's a pattern with all these folks in power.

[Isgrimnur]

More than 70% of US household COVID spread started with a child, study suggests

A study published yesterday in JAMA Network Open suggests that 70.4% of nearly 850,000 US household COVID-19 transmissions originated with a child.

A team led by Boston Children's Hospital researchers gave smartphone-connected thermometers to 848,591 households with 1,391,095 members, who took 23,153,925 temperature readings from October 2019 to October 2022. Fevers were a proxy for infection.
...
Of all households transmissions, 70.4% began with a child, with the proportion fluctuating weekly between 36.9% and 87.5%.
...
The authors concluded that children had an important role in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and that in-person school also resulted in substantial spread. "Future work could validate the inferred transmissions from a participatory network with onsite visits or other contract-tracing outreach for additional data collection and laboratory confirmation," they wrote. "Any system that leverages digital technologies must make every effort to ensure equitable access."

[Blackhawk]

Too bad there is nobody left to use that data for the next pandemic.

[Unagi]

More than 70% of US household COVID spread started with a child, study suggests

Kids spray the darndest things.

[Zaxxon]

More than 70% of US household COVID spread started with a child, study suggests

Kids spray the darndest things.

[Max Peck]

I was in the pharmacy today for my quarterly drug buy. I was the only customer with a mask, although the pharmacy personnel were masked (all the medical/pharmaceutical staff, but none of the retail staff working the floor). Aside from that, the only other masker I saw while out and about was one little old lady who was waiting for a bus.