Omicron Hasn't Changed Attitude Of Most Of Unvaccinated

 

The charts above are from a recent Kaiser Family Foundation Poll -- done between December 15th and 20th of a nationwide sample of 1,065 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

You Are Not Wrong To Be Angry With The Unvaccinated

We have had three vaccines that work for several months now -- and yet, the number of new cases of COVID-19 and the number of deaths from it are once again surging. There is only one reason this is happening -- too many people are refusing to be vaccinated, and sadly, many of them are doing it for political reasons (following the lead of Republican officials who don't want President Biden to get credit for ending the pandemic).

The unvaccinated are responsible for the resurgence. They are responsible for the shortage of medical personnel and the lack of space in our hospitals. They are responsible for the breakthrough cases of COVID among the vaccinated. They are responsible for the spread of the new and more virulent Delta variant (which is even attacking young people and children). 

It short, they are responsible for putting everyone in danger. And I sick of it. I'm angry -- especially at those who claim it is their right to put the lives of others in danger by refusing the vaccine. It's time to mandate the vaccine in schools and in all workplaces -- and I don't care whether the vaccine refusers like that or not!

The following is a small part of an op-ed by Paul Waldman in The Washington Post:

On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for the coronavirus, and approvals for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines could follow soon. This could be a significant step in convincing the millions of unvaccinated Americans to finally get vaccinated, even if it doesn’t quickly transform the state of the pandemic.

It’s also an opportunity for us to say to the hard-core vaccine refusers: We’re done with you.

We’ll treat you when you come to the hospital, of course, because that’s how medicine works; while doctors and nurses dealing with the wave of covid-19 patients caused by the delta variant might like to turn away anyone who refused to take a vaccine, they won’t. But it’s time to refocus our outreach efforts and our public and private pandemic policies so that accommodating, understanding and pandering to the refusers is no longer one of our chief concerns. . . .

To those who say “mocking those people will never convince them to take the vaccine!”, let me suggest that it’s too late to persuade them. I’m not talking about the hesitant and the uncertain — they can be persuaded, and we need to redouble efforts to reach them. But when you see that in Mississippi — which like many states with low vaccination rates is now being ravaged by the delta variant — the state’s chief public health official felt compelled to make a public plea for people to stop drinking livestock dewormer, since a good number got the idea that it’s a treatment for covid, you have to ask if there’s anything at all that would persuade committed refusers.

Actually, we know how they got the dewormer idea: the supercharged rumor-spreading machine known as social media. Over the weekend, Facebook reluctantly admitted that “an article raising concerns that the coronavirus vaccine could lead to death was the top performing link in the United States on its platform from January through March of this year.”

It’s gotten to the point where at a rally on Saturday in Alabama of his most loyal dead-enders, former president Donald Trump said that while he believes in everyone’s freedom, “I recommend: take the vaccines. I did it. It’s good. Take the vaccines,” and boos rang out.

I’m pretty sure that if between swigs of horse dewormer, your uncle is booing his god-king Donald Trump for saying a good word about vaccination, gentle persuasion isn’t going to have much effect on him. . . .

They’ll be trying out insane new treatments, while the rest of us shake our heads at people who’d rather gargle with turpentine (or whatever the next Facebook remedy is) than get a free lifesaving vaccine. They’ll keep engaging in unhinged and violent public behavior (like assaulting teachers over mask policies), for which they should just be arrested. Our only concern should be keeping ourselves safe from them; they deserve no more consideration than that.

They won’t disappear, but we can treat them like social pariahs. And if they don’t like it? They can go ahead and wallow in their fantasies of oppression and courageous independence. Nobody said “freedom” was free.

Getting Hard To Feel Sorry For The Unvaccinated W/COVID

The following is part of an article in the Los Angeles Times. It was written by Dr. Anita Sircar (an infectious disease physician and instructor at  the UCLA School of Medicine). 

He had tested positive for the coronavirus 10 days ago. He was under 50, mildly hypertensive but otherwise in good health. Eight days earlier he started coughing and having severe fatigue. His doctor started him on antibiotics. It did not work.

Fearing his symptoms were worsening, he started taking some hydroxychloroquine he had found on the internet. It did not work.

He was now experiencing shortness of breath while doing routine daily activities such as walking from his bedroom to the bathroom or putting on his shoes. He was a shell of his former self. He eventually made his way to a facility where he could receive monoclonal antibodies, a lab-produced transfusion that substitutes for the body’s own antibodies. It did not work.

He finally ended up in the ER with dangerously low oxygen levels, exceedingly high inflammatory markers and patchy areas of infection all over his lungs. Nothing had helped. He was getting worse. He could not breathe. His wife and two young children were at home, all infected with the virus. He and his wife had decided not to get vaccinated.

Last year, a case like this would have flattened me. I would have wrestled with the sadness and how unfair life was. Battled with the angst of how unlucky he was. This year, I struggled to find sympathy. It was August 2021, not 2020. The vaccine had been widely available for months in the U.S., free to anyone who wanted it, even offered in drugstores and supermarkets. Cutting-edge, revolutionary, mind-blowing, lifesaving vaccines were available where people shopped for groceries, and they still didn’t want them. . . .

Shouting through my N95 mask and the noise of the HEPA filter, I introduced myself. I calmly asked him why he decided not to get vaccinated.

“Well, I’m not an anti-vaxxer or anything. I was just waiting for the FDA to approve the vaccine first. I didn’t want to take anything experimental. I didn’t want to be the government’s guinea pig, and I don’t trust that it’s safe,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “I can pretty much guarantee we would have never met had you gotten vaccinated, because you would have never been hospitalized. All of our COVID units are full and every single patient in them is unvaccinated. Numbers don’t lie. The vaccines work.”

This was a common excuse people gave for not getting vaccinated, fearing the vaccine because the Food and Drug Administration had granted it only emergency use authorization so far, not permanent approval. Yet the treatments he had turned to — antibiotics, monoclonal antibodies and hydroxychloroquine — were considered experimental, with mixed evidence to support their use.

“Well,” I said, “I am going to treat you with remdesivir, which only recently received FDA approval.” I explained that it had been under an EUA for most of last year and had not been studied or administered as widely as COVID-19 vaccines. That more than 353 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered in the U.S. along with more than 4.7 billion doses worldwide without any overwhelming, catastrophic side effects. “Not nearly as many doses of remdesivir have been given or studied in people and its long-term side effects are still unknown,” I said. “Do you still want me to give it to you?”

“Yes” he responded, “Whatever it takes to save my life.”

It did not work.

My patient died nine days later of a stroke. We, the care team, reconciled this loss by telling ourselves: He made a personal choice not to get vaccinated, not to protect himself or his family. We did everything we could with what we had to save him. This year, this tragedy, this unnecessary, entirely preventable loss, was on him. . . .

If you believe the pandemic is almost over and I can ride it out, without getting vaccinated, you could not be more wrong. This virus will find you.

If you believe I’ll just wait until the FDA approves the vaccine first, you may not live to see the day.

If you believe if I get infected I’ll just go to the hospital and get treated, there is no guarantee we can save your life, nor even a promise we’ll have a bed for you.

If you believe I’m pregnant and I don’t want the vaccine to affect me, my baby or my future fertility, it matters little if you’re not alive to see your newborn.

If you believe I won’t get my children vaccinated because I don’t know what the long-term effects will be, it matters little if they don’t live long enough for you to find out.

If you believe I’ll just let everyone else get vaccinated around me so I don’t have to, there are 93 million eligible, unvaccinated people in the “herd” who think the same way you do and are getting in the way of ending this pandemic.

If you believe vaccinated people are getting infected anyway, so what’s the point?, the vaccine was built to prevent hospitalizations and deaths from severe illness. Instead of fatal pneumonia, those with breakthrough infections have a short, bad cold, so the vaccine has already proved itself. The vaccinated are not dying of COVID-19.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has mutated countless times during this pandemic, adapting to survive. Stacked up against a human race that has resisted change every step of the way — including wearing masks, social distancing, quarantining and now refusing lifesaving vaccines — it is easy to see who will win this war if human behavior fails to change quickly.

The most effective thing you can do to protect yourself, your loved ones and the world is to GET VACCINATED.

And it will work.

Vaccinations And Vaccine Refusals In Each Party

 

This chart reflects the results of a new Fox News Poll -- done between August 7th and 10th of a national sample of 1,002 registered voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

Note that most Democrats (84%) have already been vaccinated, and very few (4%) say they will not be vaccinated. It is very different in the Republican Party, where only 56% have already been vaccinated and 29% say they will not get vaccinated.

The surge of the Delta variant of the Coronavirus is due mainly to unvaccinated people -- and this poll makes it very clear which party those people are in.

Unvaccinated / Donald Trump/ Conservative Media Are The Most To Blame For COVID-19 Resurgence

 The chart above is from the Axios / Ipsos Poll. It shows that the entities blamed the most for the virus resurgence are the unvaccinated, Donald Trump, and conservative media. The survey was conducted between July 30th and August 2nd of a national sample of 999 adults, and has between a 3.0 and 3.4 point margin of error.