The entire South will remain a source of Covid outbreaks for years to come
The entire South will remain a source of Covid outbreaks for years to come
Hope is the denial of reality
I'm curious. I read that the rate of people willing to be vaccinated in the USA is (shockingly) low. Is that roughly the same across the USA or is it depending on the region? E.g. here for general vaccinations (not sure about covid specific) it pretty much correlates with our 'bible belt', i.e. reformed protestant regions.Originally Posted by Loki
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See map here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...ine-doses.html
The differences across states will only increase when it's the general population getting vaccinated.
Hope is the denial of reality
Thanks.
Isn't that map more about how well it's organized than about willingness to be vaccinated? And how the risk groups are distributed between states?
Dutch government expects that, barring any more unexpected delays in delivery (they did already estimate based on current reliability), every adult who wants a vaccine, will have had at least one dose by july.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
From memory
About 7% of white Democrats don't want to be vaccinated.
About 30% of blacks and hispanics.
About 50% of white Republicans (!!!!)
So the South is pretty f**ked unless attitudes change.
Important update:
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"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Both. There are tons of unused vaccines in the South because demand is so low. Only 46% of teachers in my state said they'd get vaccinated.
Hope is the denial of reality
America really is a world away. It is remarkable the figure could be 90% this side of the pond and 46% that side.
Why is it that they don't want to get it?
I wouldn't have thought teachers would be full of MAGA hat wearing QANON conspiracy nuts.
Trump got 49% of the vote and teachers are probably slightly more Democratic than the rest of the population.
We lead the nation in lawsuits relating to separation of state and church in our schools.
Hope is the denial of reality
Well indeed, the figures I'd seen were 90% white Democrats, 50% white Republicans and 70% of blacks and hispanics getting the jab.
From that I would have guestimated teachers to be ~75% up for the jab.
The South is in a league of its own.
Hope is the denial of reality
I suppose that 50% might not be evenly distributed. Still depressing.
Hopefully in cities like Atlanta where there's more risk there'll be less idiocy on this.
Have you been able to find the actual survey question and results? I read somewhere they had no responses at all from 1 in 5 districts, and the number seems so low that I feel like it might not be completely accurate.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
The only person I saw without a mask in Atlanta was a police officer. Even (what looked like) a drug dealer was wearing a mask. Though I guess that might be helpful in that career. In my part of the state, about half the white people wear masks. Maybe 2/3 of African Americans. At least anecdotally, both numbers have been falling.
Kemp said that data was presented to him. Not sure if there's a public survey. He could also be lying, but that would be a weird thing to lie about. Unlike Trump, he's strategic with his lies.
Hope is the denial of reality
A remarkable—and remarkably silly—drama has been unfolding, in Sweden, over the past couple of days.
1. A pediatrician named Jonas Ludvigsson—one of the original signatories of the heavily criticized Great Barrington Declaration—got a letter published in NEJM, describing a not very useful study on covid-associated mortality and severe morbidity among school-age children and schoolteachers (honestly remarkable that it was published in the first place).
2. This letter received some serious criticism.
3. A private citizen who'd obtained emails between Ludvigsson and our chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell discovered that Ludvigsson had discussed an aspect of this study with Tegnell last year, and had noted that there appeared to be a significant rise in excess mortality among children aged 7-16y (one of the specific groups he looked at in his study).
4. Gretchen Vogel—a journalist at Science, who has covered Sweden's pandemic response in several articles over the past year—reported on this exchange, as well as on the critical responses to Ludvigsson's letter, noting that Ludvigsson had himself identified and been concerned about a potentially important contradictory finding that he then neglected to acknowledge in his letter as well as in his own response to the criticism.
5. The article in Science triggered a reaction that can only be regarded as extraordinary, given what it's about. It was interpreted as accusing Ludvigsson of deliberately covering up important but inconvenient findings in his own research, in order to further a malevolent and downright deadly agenda. There was a lot of talk about retractions, investigation for misconduct, etc. Ludvigsson recently rose to (entirely disproportionate) prominence in Swedish public discourse as a result of some dubious interviews and an investigation of a Facebook group in which a number of members have taken it upon themselves to lobby other countries and int'l organizations against Sweden. He has somehow become the personification of the mainstream Swedish self-image—so what was perceived as a vicious and unfair attack on him provoked an absolutely bonkers response, with a number of Swedish scientists, scicomm people, journalists, pundits and their hangers-on going after scientists and journalists in other countries who had weighed in on the matter. Everyone lost their god-damned minds.
What's clear at the moment is that Ludvigsson thought there was a major rise in excess mortality in a specific group of children, tried to get Tegnell to help him investigate this more closely, and then requested the relevant data himself—but published without having received the data he'd sought, and without acknowledging the apparent finding. I think most people will agree that this wasn't good; he could've dealt with the issue in one or two sentences. What's not clear is whether the finding itself is important—or even real. Ludvigsson thought the excess was 68% compared to the average for the five preceding years, but, if you take significant changes in the size of that demographic into account, it's more like 36%—an outlier, but, considering how few deaths there are in this group overall, not a slam dunk. Settling the matter conclusively would require a review of death certificates and medical records, which Ludvigsson has asked—but not yet been authorized—to do. Sadly, Ludvigsson, in his response to the critics, did not mention this—saying, instead, that an official had told him that none of the deaths among children—over the course of the period covered by his study—had been attributed to covid. As a result there's been a fresh wave of scientists and assorted commentators spreading a lot of clueless nonsense about official cause-of-death statistics. That being said, the apparent excess deaths are almost certainly not attributable to covid. The funniest thing about all this is that Ludvigsson himself looks much more diligent and conscientious than his defenders. The saddest thing about all this is that this episode has turned what was already a fairly toxic debate into something that might be completely unsalvageable.
Last edited by Aimless; 03-04-2021 at 08:44 PM.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I don't think he's lying, just thinking that the headline figure might be obscuring some nuance. The finding itself is politically advantageous, in a way—it allows him to argue that it's no big deal that they haven't started vaccinating most teachers yet, because most teachers don't even want the vaccine
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
That was his argument for vaccinating K-12 teachers. I.e., it won't take many doses.
Hope is the denial of reality
I am frequently shocked at how ostensibly intelligent people have trouble understanding vaccinations. I recently heard from a relative who was publicly discussing how she was so happy she would be getting the Moderna vaccine because the JNJ shot was 'controversial' and 'less effective' and it was just going to be given to marginalized communities because it was cheaper while rich white people got the 'good' vaccine.
When she was gently corrected that in fact it was equally effective at its main endpoints (not even getting into the complexities of comparing headline data from two very different trials), she doubled down with the conspiracy theory about how well all know who's going to get which vaccine and it's because of The Man trying to keep the poor and minorities down. (Which of course is wrong; marginalized communities will find it much easier to get the JNJ vaccine because it doesn't require two appointments, can be delivered to areas with less sophisticated healthcare infrastructure, and is generally a massive leap forward for our ability to fight this thing.) That brought out other people from the woodwork to talk about 'strong arguments on both sides' of the debate, even though of course *they're* going to get vaccinated.
This kind of uninformed conspiracy mongering is why vaccine hesitancy is so widespread in the US.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
Those conspiracy theories have been encouraged by politicians and media in Europe from Macron to Handelsblatt.
A myth has been adopted by many that Pfizer and Moderna are the only good vaccines.
Jeez this is worse than I thought. Though an extremely long interval of dates.
Is it too cynical to joke that at least this will help demographically for upcoming elections?
It's mind boggling how the same people who are most vocal about opening everything back, and returning to normal in general, are least inclined to do anything to get to that point.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
This is how you end up with 46% of teachers wanting a vaccine. Plus the newest GOP message is Covid no longer exists (or at least isn't worth worrying about).Jeez this is worse than I thought. Though an extremely long interval of dates.
Hope is the denial of reality
It's all part of the narrative they tell themselves. "Covid isn't really that bad anyway, this is all too much" easily segues into "well, I don't need a vaccine, I don't get flu shots either."
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
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Impressive. Especially considering it takes three weeks for a vaccine to reach full efficacy, then another couple of weeks for a death to occur, and the vaccine rollout hasn't been completed yet five weeks prior to this chart ending.
Will be interesting to see how this CFR death rate continues to decline as time goes on.
The Swedish scientific conversation around covid continues to disappoint. Meanwhile, I was asked if I wanted my first vaccine dose today, but they had to postpone it till friday because half (!!!) of vaccinated personnel have had post-vaccination reactions strong enough to make them stay home for 1-3 days (a few even longer).
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Why? That's inconsistent with what I'm seeing here.
Hope is the denial of reality
Probably cultural fever, tremor, muscle pain and vomiting
All kidding aside, you're absolutely right that it's doesn't match study findings or experiences from other countries. If it isn't influenced by culture and the like, there are other immunological, genetic & epidemiological hypotheses to explore. It would be weird and kinda outrageous if it had anything to do with production issues, and I don't think anyone has been able to connect this to specific batches (one batch may have been more likely to cause an allergic reaction, but it's uncertain).
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I suspect there's an aggravating psychosomatic factor involved. If everyone you know is having reactions, you're bound to expect and feel a reaction - a bit like man flu.
My wife works in a care home and she was amongst the first to get vaccinated last December, she had no real reaction and very few of her colleagues that booked their own appointment because they were eager to get it had a reaction.
When it was brought into the home to vaccinate the laggard staff and the residents, for the next day or two all the staff who'd avoided the vaccine until then were almost all complaining about reactions (though I don't think anyone went home because of it). The residents with dementia had not much in the way of adverse reactions. The dementia meant they rather forgot they had been vaccinated and it stopped playing in their mind.
The residents without dementia were in between the two. More likely to complain than the dementia residents (when the reverse is normally true), but less likely to complain than the staff.
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