I wish most people agreed with that sentiment as I do.

^ I do. I am so fed up with the anti-vaccine loonies.

I have a female patient who decided that she didn’t want my care because I urged her strongly to get the vaccine (and hurt her feelings).

I don’t blame some doctors who refuse to care for people who refuse to get vaccinated.

Nice isn't it? Tuesday night my husband and I and 3 others dined in a restaurant that has huge open windows. We came in masked, sat down, removed our masks, but when the server came over, quickly put them back on. She thanked us profusely for what that signified, and stated that we did not need to do that as she and the other staff are vaccinated and they are remaining masked. We replied thanks. It was such a simple, easy, pleasurable experience.

if people have legit medical reasons that's one thing. This lady's religious reason is completely batshit insane and is not a valid reason to put other people in harm's way.

I think there should be room for real religious people like Quakers/Amish and some of the others that are conscientious objectors. People that fake the funk and are anti-vax/trolling the system? Nope.

even so, if someone is working in a care home, I don't think a reasonable accommodation can be made.

I think this is fairly common among pediatricians. They tell mothers who won't allow their kids to have the usual shots to get another doctor. Among other reasons, it's because they don't want unvaccinated kids in their waiting rooms, sometimes with kids who CAN'T be vaccinated. I think the same logic applies to adults and covid vaccination.

Why get vaccinated, when you have natural immunity/antibodies?

Latest estimate I heard is that 50% of the American population has had Covid.

I had Covid and I'm fully vaccinated (Pfizer) btw.

Why should I care if I'm vaccinated and all of my love ones are, if some stranger is not vaccinated? Would I care if I walk next to a person that did not get their MMR shots at birth? No.

The article is firewalled so I can't read her reason but there are very few legitimate medical reasons. The RNA vaccines don't contain egg protein or any of the usual causes of allergy for example.

As for religious reasons, I think very frequent testing should be required of them if they decline shots--at least weekly.

Because the immunity conferred by the shots is believed stronger than natural immunity and possibly longer lasting and, in any case, vaccination of those who have had covid acts like a booster shot, literally boosting their immunity. There's some question how often repeat infection occurs but I've seen number as low as 42% protection against reinfection in those over 65 from a first infection whereas the vaccine protects them at least 85% and, on top of a first infection, almost certainly better than that. For younger people it may be less dramatic but it still makes a difference.

Why should you care about the stranger? Maybe because you are public spirited and want this disease as close to eradicated was possible to protect those who can't be vaccinated or for whom vaccination may not work such was those on cancer chemo, who have HIV and so on. You ARE public spirited aren't you?

Regarding this latter point, we in SF haven't heard much from the AIDS Foundation but I'm waiting.

So far the news is good but it seems likely there is a spectrum of immune system damage in the HIV community:

https://www.aidsmap.com/news/may-202...ne-two-studies

she has no medical reason (other than nebulous worries about side effects). Her religious reason is she thinks it's the mark of the beast.

Where did you hear that? That might be possible in some localized areas but is implausible based on serology tests.

I heard it from Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins sometime last week I tried to find and embed the video here, but I'm not sure how to do that outside of YouTube.

I made a mistake from going off of memory of something I saw a few days ago, half of unvaccinated have natural immunity, not half of the population has natural immunity. However, listen to everything else, 80-85% of adults are immune whether it's from vaccines/natural immunity at this point.

Here's the link from Yahoo, you'll have to be patient and watch the entire video of 6 minutes, you can skip forward towards the end if you want, but I suggest watching it in it's entirety.

https://news.yahoo.com/dr-makary-hig...155429401.html

Show me some data please, not some random talking head. He seems to be basing his claim on his estimate of the fraction of unrecorded cases, which is a dynamic variable difficult to analyze. Serological studies (e.g. blood donations) put the number as of a few months ago at order 20% or so.

I don't have data on my hard drive to provide. I'm just going off of what scientists are saying on the airwaves. I'm not saying that's 100% true and have no idea if they're lying to promote themselves.

Sorry if I don't consider a self-promoting MD with an MPH a scientist, especially when they're citing an indirect observable (positive tests divided by underreporting rate) that not only is in a denominator (ratio distributions are of course famously long-tailed) but time-varying (so you must integrate this long-tailed distribution against time) instead of the much more direct and statistically well-behaved serology estimates. When the two observables are inconsistent, I know which one I trust...

Here is how I’m living my life with Covid :D

https://i.postimg.cc/DzqR13vM/15494-...35-AEB0-C8.jpg

(Taken 5 minutes ago)

Stella? And where? I'll join you, without a mask! Just give me some time to purchase a plane ticket.

That's fine and I'm open to discussion. Are you a doctor, virologist, epidemiologist that has data to counter his claims that you could share with us?

You asked me where I heard the information from an earlier post of mine, so I took the time, backtracked to when it was that I heard it, found it, then provided it to you.

As folks get vaccinated, more masks off and our streets become busier and busier. The ultimate goal is both people AND car gridlock!


Gridlock, pissed off people, and people rubbing into each other on the side walk = happiness and normalcy!

NYC has seen a big increase in folks. And I remember going like 2 months ago, felt empty. The increase has been dramatic.

:cheers:


https://aws1.discourse-cdn.com/busin...f8b431db9.jpeg

I haven't worn a mask all week. It's almost as if normalcy has returned.

https://covid19serohub.nih.gov/ here is a good source for seroprevalence data. I'm a physicist who knows enough about statistics and model-building to be dangerous :).

You're not a virologist or epidemiologist right?, you're providing a link to something (the same thing I did, from which you specifically asked for)?

I haven't worn a mask, unless it was indoors (and that was local mandates), since the beginning and also, masks weren't even available during the absolute height of the pandemic, when everybody (old people) was dying in New York.

A random suburban bar. Packed, with no masks.

And certainly some of those people were not vaccinated. Tsk tsk to them.

No, but it's not obvious to me that the guy you quoted is one either. If he has some more sophisticated model than A/B, I'd like to see it.


Anyway you have no reason to listen to me. I sent you a link to a good primary source of seroprevalence data, which you can use to form your own models and interpretation.

In my view, the highest number on there is highly incongruous with the claim in the video you posted. ere. This may also be because the data is biased in some way that is undercounting, but at least the seroprevalence is a direct observable and does not require too sophisticated an analysis (one can assume with such high values, the effects of false positives and false negatives are unlikely to be very important... you may remember how improper statistical accounting of false positive rates lead to wildly incorrect conclusions in the early Santa Clara County study).

There is also independent data from blood donations, which may also be biased, but is 20% as of March, broadly consistent with the NIH data above (it's cited, for example, here: https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/15/healt...ies/index.html, I'm not sure where the Red Cross publishes their reports).

Of course this is all from March, more people have been infected by now, but given the trajectory of COVID I'd guess it the total seroprevalence is unlikely to have increased by such a large factor.


Another handle is to use the number of estimated deaths. The population IFR is on the order of 0.5-1% (depending on the demographics of the population, naturally). Conservatively using that lower number and the number of deaths so far (600k), one gets approximately 120 million cases in the US. Of course some of these cases may have happened to the same person multiple times, but at face value, this gives us a prevalence estimate as of now of around 36%. This is higher than (admittedly rather stale) serology estimates, but it is using a low-ball number for population IFR, so I would consider this an approximate upper bound.


So I'd believe anywhere between 20-35% of Americans may have had COVID-19 right now, but 50% sounds implausible given the data.

You know what's weird to me, is the fact that you created and posted a reply to me within/under 9 minutes of a video that is 7 minutes long in which I didn't give you the exact timestamp.

I looked him up and found his argument elsewhere in a more efficient medium :)
(yeah,sorry I'm not going to add any views to Fox News).

You watched the video (sounds like no), so you looked him up, formulated a response?

You asked where I heard it from, I did my DD backtracked and told you where I heard it and then you decided not to watch the video I gave you to which you asked for?

San Francisco has entered Fauci’s “herd immunity” range with 70% of the population of all ages having received at least one dose and 59% fully vaccinated. Add in those with post-infection immunity and well above 70% should have some degree of immunity. So now we’ll see what happens (remember diagnosed cases lag infections by around 2 weeks).

The data I’ve seen indicated a wider range than that and are highly localized with LA, for example, being at the upper end of your range or even above it and the Bay Area probably below it.

yeah, and places like Vermont and Hawaii are virtually unscathed.

I always wore them indoors where and when required but as soon as the CDC changed their policies and businesses started to follow suit, my masks stay in car. My wife doesn't even wear hers anymore and she was more vigilant about them.

One thing I would like to see all businesses do is let patrons know if masks are required, or if masks are not required. Many businesses have explicitly said no masks are needed when you come in. I have not seen a business that still requires it. But some businesses don't say what they want. Letting people who don't want to wear masks, and letting people who still want or need to wear masks, what the policy is would be good moving forward so people know if they need to carry a mask with them, or if there will be crowds of maskless people.

The only place I've had to wear a mask in the last couple of weeks was at the barber today. My barber has been very leery of the vaccine, but he said he got his first dose of the Pfizer shot last week (FINALLY!). Fortunately, there was no griping about the mask wearing and everyone was compliant. The rest of the barbers are already vaccinated, so once he gets his second dose the mask requirement at the shop will end.

I have never cared what the CDC said. The CDC has been so wrong, inconsistent and illogical about so much to do with covid that I consider them unreliable. Among their first mistakes was lying about the usefuness of masks, telling the public they weren’t useful, the stupidity of which was made obvious by the fact that every medical professional in every ER everywhere was wearing one.

As of now, it is still true that 56.5% of the people you will meet randomly in Texas has not been vaccinated. If you have been, you have a huge degree of protection but not 100%. The odds are overwhelming you will be protected. But you have to really hate that mask to be unwilling to slap it on your face for a few minutes in a crowded store to add just that little bit of additional protection.

Interestingly, barber shops are one of the places it makes the most sense NOT to wear a mask if the barber and customer are both vaccinated. The shops are usually small with only a few customers present at one time and you spend most of your time in the chair which is well distanced from the other chairs and their occupants. But strangely, barber shops are often one of the last places allowed to open and relieved of mask requirements. This is the kind of bizarre rule-making that causes a loss of faith in the authorities.

IDK if its a Covid thing, but did anybody get their federal tax refund yet? I only got my state tax refund but IDK where the F my federal one is. I hope the clowns in the tax office aren't busy working from home watching the hub. :hell:

This is the latest I've ever filed my income taxes, which I did on May 15th---and I got my federal refund on May 24th, direct deposit, of course. I was actually surprised how fast it came, I thought it would be at least 3 weeks.

I haven't gotten my state refund yet.

EDIT: My mistake, I actually got my state refund on May 21st---I just logged onto my bank account and went through the deposits. Wow, that was fast!

My partner and I usually file our taxes early but this was a weird year. And with the extension to May, we waited until almost the very last day.

Masks is still prevalent around here, I'd say at least 90% of people on the street wear them and 100% of people Ive seen entering stores are masked up.

Here, inside stores we have gone from 100% masked to maybe 95% masked.

Florida? We were told it's some sort of maskless wonderland!
I'm rural so I just...don't have to really wear my mask and don't have much opportunities to do so. Even a the peak of mask wearing, I only had it on maybe one or two days a week.

In the last week or so I’ve noticed that changing. In SF I see a lot more maskless faces outside now and I’m no longer self-conscious not wearing a mask. In stores it’s still mask-up for entry though.

I don’t get no stinking tax refund. In the unlikely event I’ve paid more than I owe, I let them apply it to next year’s estimated payments. But you can check your account with the IRS online now to see if they’ve processed your return or mailed your refund or received payments and the last I checked they still hadn’t processed my 2020 return about 6 weeks after I mailed it (have to mail it on paper because have to file a form tax software doesn’t support).

I got a letter saying that they're reviewing it. I never got the first and second EIP payments (I got the third just fine!) so I included them in my refund, which I'm guessing they need to check.

Yeah maybe because the area I shop in is near 2 big hospitals, but most people, just about everyone in fact, is masked up----I am much more confident tho about going out maskless tho, since vaccination rates are high here.

I got the third EIP because I get a VA Disability check but I'm not entitled to it based on income so I sent it back. As I understand it, these are advance tax refunds and if I had kept it I would have owed the additional $1400 in taxes next year. The IRS credited it as an estimated payment--I guess that balances out to zero (it's getting confusing).

yeah, my wife and I qualified for all 3 EIPs but only got the third one somehow (despite tons of calling the IRS and playing phone tag until the call dropped on their side or they had technical difficulties and then me starting on hold for hours again).