Booster and office access has been such a ringing dissonance for me.
For boosters, I'm "too healthy" and do not qualify under even the most generous reading of the CDC guidance.
On office access, my office is still not open while the rest of my family has gone back to work/school. My spouse is higher risk and my kids only got their first shots last week.
So why the fuck am I, "the low risk one", stuck at home alone all day? Who the fuck am I protecting? What is the point anymore?
Yeah, actually. I biked to work. It was great exercise, physically and mentally. The change of scenery was a good shift and being downtown with lots of coworkers and people was invigorating. Biking was also pretty core to my identity. Not in a "spandex/lycra" way (don't own any) but it's probably one of the first things people would start with when describing me. Now that's all gone cuz I've got no where to go.
A debate wouldn't be productive but let's just say a cafe or park is not a long term solution.
I actually am considering forming local only in person teams for tech projects/ventures, I think there is a market demand for it (and talent).
That may just be a factor of my neighborhood, as many people that could re-locate, relocated to the same areas.
Given all the commercial space available as companies vacated, its just the free market in action.
What I'm finding is that people rejected one environment, but have not been given a framework to navigate an unstructured life. And like a familiar structure.
Note that you can still bike to work: take your bike, drive halfway to you workplace, come back home and start working.
For some person having a ritual marking the beginning and the end of the workday can also be useful to balance work and personal life.
This doesn't help with missing the coworkers of course, but depending on what kind of job and where they live maybe something can be done about that too ?
I'm a biker too. I have more time for biking now that I'm not in the office - I can hop on the bike and choose a route in the morning before I start my day, or in the early evening after work is done.
If anything, not being in the office should give you more time to exercise in the way you want to.
That's the only thing I can work out - they are worried about one person getting sick and dying on campus from a back to work mandate - then what happens?
This is complete nonsense and only benefits the pockets of lawyers, pharma companies, and the media.
If this reasoning was logically sound then the same should apply for all of the existing fatal diseases listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics. Let's also not forget seasonal flu.
> So why the fuck am I, "the low risk one", stuck at home alone all day? Who the fuck am I protecting?
It's not about you.
I'm not convinced that boosters should be required, in order to go back to work. But, really, to answer your question: It's not about you. It's about the people you're around. At work.
Just like everything else with COVID -- the reality is that we have to account for the affect on everyone, and not just ourselves. Individually, we have extremely low odds of suffering the worst from COVID. Collectively, hospitals have overflowed, 700,000+ people in the States have died, and many are suffering long-term health consequences.
It's not about you. It's about everyone.
That being said: I'm in Canada, where boosters are still uncommon. I've never heard of any booster requirements, just to go into the office.
You're missing the dissonance part: all the people around me, who are high risk, are at work or school. I am classed as low risk (= no booster) yet I'm perma-WFH. If it's not about me, what is it about?
Also to clarify, I'm very much NOT arguing for forcing people to return to work or an in-person model of work. In fact, I quite like the "remote style" of work and would continue it even while in person. I just miss my commute and the scene.
What are you arguing for? If co-workers don't wish to go back into the office even if they're allowed to (which is the situation at a lot of tech companies these days), what does that do for your commute and scene? (I do get some nostalgia for being with co-workers--and I'm certainly happy to be back to events again--but clearly there's a tradeoff that you and co-workers need to make.)
You can qualify a lot of F’d up policy just by saying “it’s not about you, it’s about everyone!”
When we were dealing with a completely and utterly unknown virus for which we had no information, no effective responses, no useful therapies or treatments, no real understanding of how it spread, no vaccines, and not even a clear idea of where community spread already happened, taking some extreme measures in response to a pandemic made sense.
We now have much better information than we had plus vaccines faster than we ever had vaccines in response to a new pandemic before plus the resilience of the COVID survivors, both known survivors and unknown survivors, and useful therapies and treatments.
The risk calculus has changed and so must the response shift from the public to the private: from government to individual.
> The risk calculus has changed and so must the response shift from the public to the private: from government to individual.
I don't think it has shifted all that much in many countries. Yes, we have vaccines and better treatment. At the same time, vaccination rates aren't as high as they should be, plus we're dealing with a new variant that's more than twice as contagious and probably causes more severe cases. We're also dealing with waning immunity.
I wouldn't go as far as saying these factors offset each other completely, but last year, we've had all kinds of non-pharmaceutical interventions in place (masks, contact restrictions). Many countries have now abolished these.
I might buy the "individual choice" argument if negative effects were only felt by those choosing to not get vaccinated, not wear masks or similar, but once hospitals/ICUs overflow, other people suffer or die too.
This bears repeating every time this gets mentioned:
In the US, even before the pandemic, it was "standard" for ICUs at most level 1 trauma centers and tertiary care facilities to operate at 80-90% capacity[1] and for ERs to be overwhelmed by patients in bad flu years[2].
SARS-CoV-2 is basically already an endemic virus, just like influenza, and in the near-term it is absolutely unrealistic to expect that somehow miraculously unlike influenza, it won't have a material impact on hospital utilization rates.
Probably has more to do with how office is calculating their collective risks in business-as-usual on site than with your specific risk.
And beyond that, limits on individual activity have as much to do with collective regional transmission rate as they do with individual risk (though CA numbers look pretty decent recently).
Not sure how old kids are or if you really have a choice at this stage, but it does seem Germany, France, Scandanavia, Taiwan have halted at least Moderna for the youth and now even Pfizer (Taiwan).
Saying because people in my family didn't know about this, and would have wanted this relatively new information to help make a decision.
Like most situations (at least in CA) involving the pandemic, doing it a wrong way is easier than doing it the right way. All the people I know who got their boosters simply lied and said they were eligible. Nobody checks. Just like back when the vaccines first emerged: The easiest way to get one early was to just lie. Nobody checked back then, either. Ironically, also the easiest way to comply with any vaccine mandate, so far, has been to just lie and say you are vaccinated and/or present a fake card. You can basically do anything, with a white piece of cardboard that says "Mickey Mouse" on it. Nobody verifies anything. It's all incompetence and blind trust from officials, top to bottom, which incentivizes taking the easier, dishonest path.
It's like getting pulled over and being able to say "trust me officer, I've got a license" and they believe you. Honesty and waiting your turn buys you nothing. Total incompetence.
- The risk that you would spread COVID to other people if you caught COVID
- How productive you can be at home compared to your office/school
Your overall health only impacts the first one which is why you haven't been eligible for a booster. You still have just as much risk of spreading COVID as anyone else so unless you would be much more efficient at the office/school, it still makes sense to stay home.
For example, I would bet you would agree that your kids are getting more out of going to school rather than doing it remotely so that third variable shifts the overall equation to favor them returning to in person schooling.
Lots of people are justifying this as if it's logical, but ultimately rules like this are the result of bureaucracy.
Most likely your office is still WFH because nobody cares. Maybe nobody else wants to go back, maybe the company saves money, maybe someone high-up is still nervous about covid, probably a combination of those three.
It's similar to how at most places there are signs everywhere saying "please remain 6 feet apart", "due to covid ..." and people don't even follow these rules. Nobody bothered to take the signs down.
Ultimately if you're vaccinated, there's not really a point to masking or social distancing. The exception is masking in public areas like supermarkets and doctors' offices where sick people have to go and it's not a big deal. Or in areas where there is hospitals are overflowing and there are too many unvaccinated, like earlier in the year.
I see nothing wrong with this, now that the vaccines appear to be in plentiful supply. If you think you need the extra protection, why not?
It would have been different back in the early days, when there wasn't enough to go around. Then it made sense to restrict vaccines to the most vulnerable (elderly, people in poor health, people who are exposed a lot in the course of their employment...)
If someone can't get a first or second dose, it's because their government is fucked up in some way, not because there is a shortage of the raw vaccines.
My understanding is that Booster shots are extremely effective at further preventing the spread of Covid. Indeed, the first result I get when searching "covid booster effectiveness" says that booster shots reduce infections by a factor of 11:
It is my understanding that they found there was not enough evidence showing the benefit to healthy adults vs the increased risk of side effects. Now that there is more evidence they might reconsider.
I have an appointment for getting my booster shot next month. Won't hurt me and might save me from hospitalization or worse. I know several people that have had Covid at this point. Several of those had a rough time. A few of them were vaccinated and mostly had minor symptoms (comparatively) but still not nice.
For me the reasoning is very simple: I want to maximize my chances if I get infected and minimize my chances for actually getting infected. Vaccines do that. And I definitely want to minimize the risk of me spreading this to somebody else that might actually die. For example, I know of one case of a person that got infected and then visited his parents. They died; he lives apparently. COVID sucks.
Those still arguing that it's all a big com-plot by Bill Gates or whatever, stop being selfish needle shy dicks, and get vaccinated already. Lets face it, men are pathetic weasels when it comes to needles and that's all there's to this. Been there done that. Get over it. People are dying. Don't be part of the problem and stop rationalizing the fact that you are scared of a tiny little needle.
I'm surprised that booster shots had eligibility requirements to begin with, it didn't seem like there was a boatload of general interest in getting one.
For people outside of Cali, the requirements are pretty broad and the forms themselves state that no one will ask which of the requirements apply to you. One entire class of requirements is for working in "high-risk" settings. The medical risks requirements list is a mile long, and includes a BMI of >25 kg/m^2, which includes upwards of 75% of Americans.
Now is prime time to be giving out boosters. With the holidays coming up, waning immunity from people who got their vaccines early, and another wave on the horizon, it makes complete sense to let as many people get boosters now, that way, they have maximum defence coming into the holidays.
https://www.unicef.org/supply/covid-19-vaccine-market-dashbo... says that 20.9 billion doses have been secured, or about 2.6 doses for every person on earth. Now, distribution is undoubtedly still a problem in some regions of the world, but it does look like there are plenty of doses available. At this stage, I don't think taking an extra dose equates to someone else not getting one.
Canada had more vaccines 'secured' per capita than any other country on earth, but its vaccination campaign lagged behind the US by months. In Canada's case, secured meant per-purchased. Delivery was a completely separate issue.
We had secured 20 million doses of AstraZeneca. We have yet to receive even one dose (We eventually received some from Serum Institute of India, COVAX, etc. but none from our main contract for 20 million doses with AstraZeneca corporation). We had 'secured' 38 million Johnson & Johnson doses. we received 300k, which turned out to be most likely contaminated and could not be used, so they were sent back. We have yet to receive a single usable dose of Johnson & Johnson out of the 38 million we have 'secured'.
Secured just means they have the budget and the contract in place. It doesn't say anything about delivery timeline.
My understanding is that if there are doses available in your location, they will probably not be relocated to another location, and will likely just sit there until they're used or go bad. So as long as there's an excess of supply where you are, there's no harm to anyone else to make use of them, because the chances of them going to another country where people need their initial doses is pretty slim to none.
(Of course if everyone takes this advice to the point where there stops being enough supply in your area, then that will probably trigger larger orders for doses, which maybe could impact other places that need them more.)
Anyone age-appropriate in the US who wants a booster can get one. I'm not sure I technically qualify--I didn't when I got one--but pharmacies etc. won't, and almost certainly can't, make decisions about whether you get one or not.
Children can't get boosters, what are you talking about? Paul Offit does not think anyone under 30 should. I suppose they could if they have a hardly functioning immune system, but a third dose might not work either.
I don't think I'm getting a booster. I could be swayed one way or the other depending on new information that comes out. I already had Moderna at the start of the year which has the higher load among the vaccines and I'm not really at risk. I'd be interested to know the risk of myocarditis from a booster versus being exposed to the real virus once fully vaccinated.
You can get a booster shot pretty much anywhere in the US by self-declaring you're in a high risk category. Since that includes being overweight, a lot of people can get their boosters in full good conscience. Walgreens is one place where there's almost no wait.
Getting a dose of vaccine happens a lot faster than losing weight.
It's not a bad idea to lose excess weight, but it's a weird response, it takes months to lose weight and ~1 hour to get a shot. I got my booster in about 10 minutes because they offered it to me at a scheduled appointment.
For many people this is not true. I never struggled with my weight until I had a weird thyroid thing in my mid-20s. While my levels have returned to "normal" losing weight has been quite difficult. I'm far from the only one who has a hard time.
I’ve seen this in CO too, but here the gov said that since Covid is spreading so quickly, that everybody is effectively on the front line or in a high risk setting. In that sense the CDC criteria is met. Since the criteria in an app is often just a handful of checkboxes, scheduling apps and pages don’t present a problem.
I'm sure this headline has nothing to do with the massive supply of expiring vials that pharmaceutical companies are desperately hoping to turn a profit on.
We had a choice to make things government control without a profit motive, to ignore IP law and have a Trips waiver, to nationalize healthcare, and we said no to all of them and the result is a system where there's supposed to be a profit motive reason behind everything.
Isn't this what everyone wanted? Everything being run "like a business" to maximize profits? Wasn't that how we all intentionally set it up? Shouldn't y'all be feverishly shaking the pom poms and doing backflips and squad cheers for capitalist efficiencies and the free market?
Wait you are a 20 year old with high levels of vitamin D, low risk of death from covid[0], with an account created 3 days ago that ALSO has major doubts about a vaccine maker? Hmm
This very clearly wasn't a study conducted by Pfizer. And there are a bunch of other studies that indicate the same thing.
If you really think that they're capable of completely falsifying results of multiple studies performed by various governments and research institutions around the world by way of bribing _everyone_ involved, you have a lot more confidence in their ability to successfully pull of a giant, complex, illegal operation without getting caught than I do.
This isn't to say that pharmaceutical companies don't engage in shady tactics when it comes to performing their own studies and bribing doctors, but this is a vastly different circumstance. They don't control these studies.
> People in California who are 18 and older are eligible for a COVID booster shot as long as at least six months have passed their second dose of the two-shot Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or two months must have passed since their Johnson & Johnson shot.
What's the protocol for six months having passed but also tested positive for COVID? Like, this guidance here is pretty clear, but it doesn't seem to be enough to judge personal risk tolerance.
I'm unvaccinated, been working from the office the entire time, not planning to get it. As a healthy, young man, with healthy vitamin D levels, the risk of getting noticeable symptoms, let alone ending up in a hospital, is a nice round 0 (I ran the numbers, there were 0 such cases worldwide). I have also never been tested, or subject to any limitations regarding this status.
I did the same calculation and came to a similar conclusion. Here's one such calculator: https://www.qcovid.org/Calculation. There are others based on more recent data, as well as papers and government data with age-stratified hospitalisations and deaths by vaccination status.
Many seem to have forgotten life is not risk free.
All these years I could have been driving without a seat belt - my insurance company’s says I’m a low risk driver - and yet the DMV insists on the seat belt mandate
We weren't talking about mandates, but I'll bite. The difference is you don't have to trust the government to know seat belts save lives; the law on seat belts is common sense to anyone of sound mind. On the other hand, show me anyone who can see that getting an injection of some vaccine of unknown (to the average recipient) content and function is common sense. Note that I'm NOT making ANY claims about the vaccine efficacy or danger of lack thereof, simply that a typical individual can't look at the clear liquid in the syringe and innately know that it saves lives. It necessarily requires faith in government or medical institutions or doctors who tell us they are safe. Seat belts don't require such faith, so such mandates can't be compared like for like.
> On the other hand, show me anyone who can see that getting an injection of some vaccine of unknown (to the average recipient) content and function is common sense.
no one possesses full knowledge about everything in the world so trust is part of life.
When you get a prescription do you trust the doctor, the pharmacist & the pharma co ?
When you get on an airplane- do you trust the crew & the FAA ?
When you consume food you trust the cook & the FDA?
It’s trust all the way down - of course it’s all ok until it isn’t
Carrying unvaccinated means you have a much higher risk of carrying the disease without knowing it, and passing it on to someone who does not share your low-risk profile. Did you include that when you "ran the numbers"?
Personally I'd be fine if people went unvaccinated and choose to take the risk for themselves. But at the same time they should also carry the cost if they need extensive medical treatment. Similarly to how drivers with a history of accidents pay more for insurance.
Would you be in favour of applying this policy to all people displaying behaviours deemed at higher risk of requiring hospital treatment? And who should decide what constitutes risky activity?
Not common and certainly changing in some ways but for example smoking had been deemed high risk. There are ways to model the risk here for at least some activities. Eg do you have a lot of speeding tickets? Car insurance goes up.
This messaging is horrifically bad. No one in the CA government is directly saying everyone should get the booster it seems like.
"Allow patients to self-determine their risk of exposure" -> ??? I'm not a doctor, why are you making me do that?
"If you think you will benefit from getting a booster shot, I encourage you to go out and get it" -> ??? Everyone would technically benefit, why are you not just saying everyone?
In another article: "Ghaly said that guidance is in line with the federal government’s eligibility rules for booster shots" -> ??? It's not! "Wanting a booster" is not one of the eligibility criteria.
I'm going to get the booster soon, even though I don't qualify under CDC guidelines, to be clear. But only because CA is giving me the wink-wink, nudge-nudge that I can just ignore the guidelines and go get one. No one will ask questions.
Its not just California that is making it easy to qualify. I know many people get doses from CVS because they don't ask any questions about eligibility. My sister and her family all got booster doses because even boosters were approved.
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[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 168 ms ] threadFor boosters, I'm "too healthy" and do not qualify under even the most generous reading of the CDC guidance.
On office access, my office is still not open while the rest of my family has gone back to work/school. My spouse is higher risk and my kids only got their first shots last week.
So why the fuck am I, "the low risk one", stuck at home alone all day? Who the fuck am I protecting? What is the point anymore?
Maybe it would help to work from a cafe, or even outside on a picnic table. You can tether to your phone.
Of all the things I miss from pre-pandemic life, commuting in to the office is NOT one of them.
A debate wouldn't be productive but let's just say a cafe or park is not a long term solution.
That may just be a factor of my neighborhood, as many people that could re-locate, relocated to the same areas.
Given all the commercial space available as companies vacated, its just the free market in action.
What I'm finding is that people rejected one environment, but have not been given a framework to navigate an unstructured life. And like a familiar structure.
For some person having a ritual marking the beginning and the end of the workday can also be useful to balance work and personal life.
This doesn't help with missing the coworkers of course, but depending on what kind of job and where they live maybe something can be done about that too ?
If anything, not being in the office should give you more time to exercise in the way you want to.
I'm not looking for everyday, but one day a week would be nice to have more interactive discussions about the work that week etc.
Given a choice, she'd rather be the one that's home all day but that's sadly not to be.
1) A booster
2) A less restrictive workplace or perhaps an "essential" job.
3) A medical condition that precludes the vaccine.
That's the only thing I can work out - they are worried about one person getting sick and dying on campus from a back to work mandate - then what happens?
If this reasoning was logically sound then the same should apply for all of the existing fatal diseases listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics. Let's also not forget seasonal flu.
It's not about you.
I'm not convinced that boosters should be required, in order to go back to work. But, really, to answer your question: It's not about you. It's about the people you're around. At work.
Just like everything else with COVID -- the reality is that we have to account for the affect on everyone, and not just ourselves. Individually, we have extremely low odds of suffering the worst from COVID. Collectively, hospitals have overflowed, 700,000+ people in the States have died, and many are suffering long-term health consequences.
It's not about you. It's about everyone.
That being said: I'm in Canada, where boosters are still uncommon. I've never heard of any booster requirements, just to go into the office.
Also to clarify, I'm very much NOT arguing for forcing people to return to work or an in-person model of work. In fact, I quite like the "remote style" of work and would continue it even while in person. I just miss my commute and the scene.
Do you work in a 1 person office? - are there others there and maybe management doesn’t want a full office everyday, have you asked them ?
It’s not about you
Find a coffee/espresso shop that is as far away as halfway to your old office and drive to it and back before you start your workday.
Do the same after work for some other location.
Find ways to enjoy your new freedom!
When we were dealing with a completely and utterly unknown virus for which we had no information, no effective responses, no useful therapies or treatments, no real understanding of how it spread, no vaccines, and not even a clear idea of where community spread already happened, taking some extreme measures in response to a pandemic made sense.
We now have much better information than we had plus vaccines faster than we ever had vaccines in response to a new pandemic before plus the resilience of the COVID survivors, both known survivors and unknown survivors, and useful therapies and treatments.
The risk calculus has changed and so must the response shift from the public to the private: from government to individual.
I don't think it has shifted all that much in many countries. Yes, we have vaccines and better treatment. At the same time, vaccination rates aren't as high as they should be, plus we're dealing with a new variant that's more than twice as contagious and probably causes more severe cases. We're also dealing with waning immunity.
I wouldn't go as far as saying these factors offset each other completely, but last year, we've had all kinds of non-pharmaceutical interventions in place (masks, contact restrictions). Many countries have now abolished these.
I might buy the "individual choice" argument if negative effects were only felt by those choosing to not get vaccinated, not wear masks or similar, but once hospitals/ICUs overflow, other people suffer or die too.
This bears repeating every time this gets mentioned:
In the US, even before the pandemic, it was "standard" for ICUs at most level 1 trauma centers and tertiary care facilities to operate at 80-90% capacity[1] and for ERs to be overwhelmed by patients in bad flu years[2].
SARS-CoV-2 is basically already an endemic virus, just like influenza, and in the near-term it is absolutely unrealistic to expect that somehow miraculously unlike influenza, it won't have a material impact on hospital utilization rates.
[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/patient-flow/2-healthc...
[2] https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...
And beyond that, limits on individual activity have as much to do with collective regional transmission rate as they do with individual risk (though CA numbers look pretty decent recently).
Saying because people in my family didn't know about this, and would have wanted this relatively new information to help make a decision.
It's like getting pulled over and being able to say "trust me officer, I've got a license" and they believe you. Honesty and waiting your turn buys you nothing. Total incompetence.
- Your personal risk if you caught COVID
- The risk that you would spread COVID to other people if you caught COVID
- How productive you can be at home compared to your office/school
Your overall health only impacts the first one which is why you haven't been eligible for a booster. You still have just as much risk of spreading COVID as anyone else so unless you would be much more efficient at the office/school, it still makes sense to stay home.
For example, I would bet you would agree that your kids are getting more out of going to school rather than doing it remotely so that third variable shifts the overall equation to favor them returning to in person schooling.
Most likely your office is still WFH because nobody cares. Maybe nobody else wants to go back, maybe the company saves money, maybe someone high-up is still nervous about covid, probably a combination of those three.
It's similar to how at most places there are signs everywhere saying "please remain 6 feet apart", "due to covid ..." and people don't even follow these rules. Nobody bothered to take the signs down.
Ultimately if you're vaccinated, there's not really a point to masking or social distancing. The exception is masking in public areas like supermarkets and doctors' offices where sick people have to go and it's not a big deal. Or in areas where there is hospitals are overflowing and there are too many unvaccinated, like earlier in the year.
It would have been different back in the early days, when there wasn't enough to go around. Then it made sense to restrict vaccines to the most vulnerable (elderly, people in poor health, people who are exposed a lot in the course of their employment...)
If there's plenty to go around, why not let people decide that for themselves?
Edit:
https://www.unicef.org/supply/covid-19-vaccine-market-dashbo...
20.9 billion doses have been secured.
If someone can't get a first or second dose, it's because their government is fucked up in some way, not because there is a shortage of the raw vaccines.
> Rich countries have about twice the population of low-income countries, yet they have received about 50 times as many Covid-19 vaccine doses [0]
[0] https://www.vox.com/22759707/covid-19-vaccine-gap-covax-rich...
I agree completely.
My understanding is that Booster shots are extremely effective at further preventing the spread of Covid. Indeed, the first result I get when searching "covid booster effectiveness" says that booster shots reduce infections by a factor of 11:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/09/studies-...
And if you don't get infected, you can't spread it. So there should be a big public health benefit to giving boosters to as many people as possible.
Am I misunderstanding something, or was the reasoning behind the recommendation stupid?
For me the reasoning is very simple: I want to maximize my chances if I get infected and minimize my chances for actually getting infected. Vaccines do that. And I definitely want to minimize the risk of me spreading this to somebody else that might actually die. For example, I know of one case of a person that got infected and then visited his parents. They died; he lives apparently. COVID sucks.
Those still arguing that it's all a big com-plot by Bill Gates or whatever, stop being selfish needle shy dicks, and get vaccinated already. Lets face it, men are pathetic weasels when it comes to needles and that's all there's to this. Been there done that. Get over it. People are dying. Don't be part of the problem and stop rationalizing the fact that you are scared of a tiny little needle.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
For people outside of Cali, the requirements are pretty broad and the forms themselves state that no one will ask which of the requirements apply to you. One entire class of requirements is for working in "high-risk" settings. The medical risks requirements list is a mile long, and includes a BMI of >25 kg/m^2, which includes upwards of 75% of Americans.
Now is prime time to be giving out boosters. With the holidays coming up, waning immunity from people who got their vaccines early, and another wave on the horizon, it makes complete sense to let as many people get boosters now, that way, they have maximum defence coming into the holidays.
We had secured 20 million doses of AstraZeneca. We have yet to receive even one dose (We eventually received some from Serum Institute of India, COVAX, etc. but none from our main contract for 20 million doses with AstraZeneca corporation). We had 'secured' 38 million Johnson & Johnson doses. we received 300k, which turned out to be most likely contaminated and could not be used, so they were sent back. We have yet to receive a single usable dose of Johnson & Johnson out of the 38 million we have 'secured'.
Secured just means they have the budget and the contract in place. It doesn't say anything about delivery timeline.
(Of course if everyone takes this advice to the point where there stops being enough supply in your area, then that will probably trigger larger orders for doses, which maybe could impact other places that need them more.)
Some do, especially under the BMI cutoff, but how are they supposed to know that? They're otherwise healthy.
I don't qualify, but CA is giving me the wink-wink, nudge-nudge that I can just ignore the guidelines and go get one. No one will ask questions.
The messaging is incredibly bad and inconsistent.
It's not a bad idea to lose excess weight, but it's a weird response, it takes months to lose weight and ~1 hour to get a shot. I got my booster in about 10 minutes because they offered it to me at a scheduled appointment.
For many people this is not true. I never struggled with my weight until I had a weird thyroid thing in my mid-20s. While my levels have returned to "normal" losing weight has been quite difficult. I'm far from the only one who has a hard time.
Your life experience is not universal.
Isn't this what everyone wanted? Everything being run "like a business" to maximize profits? Wasn't that how we all intentionally set it up? Shouldn't y'all be feverishly shaking the pom poms and doing backflips and squad cheers for capitalist efficiencies and the free market?
Probably has to do with the fact that the booster is effective.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer#Legal_issues
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29203902#29204901
If you really think that they're capable of completely falsifying results of multiple studies performed by various governments and research institutions around the world by way of bribing _everyone_ involved, you have a lot more confidence in their ability to successfully pull of a giant, complex, illegal operation without getting caught than I do.
This isn't to say that pharmaceutical companies don't engage in shady tactics when it comes to performing their own studies and bribing doctors, but this is a vastly different circumstance. They don't control these studies.
What's the protocol for six months having passed but also tested positive for COVID? Like, this guidance here is pretty clear, but it doesn't seem to be enough to judge personal risk tolerance.
Many seem to have forgotten life is not risk free.
no one possesses full knowledge about everything in the world so trust is part of life.
When you get a prescription do you trust the doctor, the pharmacist & the pharma co ?
When you get on an airplane- do you trust the crew & the FAA ?
When you consume food you trust the cook & the FDA?
It’s trust all the way down - of course it’s all ok until it isn’t
"Allow patients to self-determine their risk of exposure" -> ??? I'm not a doctor, why are you making me do that?
"If you think you will benefit from getting a booster shot, I encourage you to go out and get it" -> ??? Everyone would technically benefit, why are you not just saying everyone?
In another article: "Ghaly said that guidance is in line with the federal government’s eligibility rules for booster shots" -> ??? It's not! "Wanting a booster" is not one of the eligibility criteria.
I'm going to get the booster soon, even though I don't qualify under CDC guidelines, to be clear. But only because CA is giving me the wink-wink, nudge-nudge that I can just ignore the guidelines and go get one. No one will ask questions.