Unemployed due to SCOTUS

[chessknt]

The hospitals have never been overflowing with unvaccinated college students. The public health capital that has been spent mandating vaccines and boosters on young adults would have had a far greater return on investment if it had been spent on getting at risk individuals their first dose. There really is a huge stratification based on age.

One of the more nonsensical policies that occurred during omicron was allowing Covid positive healthcare workers who were mildly symptomatic to come into work if they were vaccinated, while unvaccinated healthcare workers who tested negative were not allowed to work. It doesn't take a genius to see who has the higher risk of spreading Covid to patients.

That might have happened in Tucker's fantasy land but literally nowhere else was there a standing policy to come in to work if covid + and symptomatic if vaccinated.

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[nimbus]

That might have happened in Tucker's fantasy land but literally nowhere else was there a standing policy to come in to work if covid + and symptomatic if vaccinated.

Sometging close actually happened in California because there was a concern that there wouldn’t be enough COVID- HCW to take care of patients. Under emergency conditions, asymptomatic COVID+ HCWs were allowed to return to work immediately wearing a mask, and preferably taking care of only COVID+ patients.

AFL 21-08

www.cdph.ca.gov

 

[Impromptu]

That might have happened in Tucker's fantasy land but literally nowhere else was there a standing policy to come in to work if covid + and symptomatic if vaccinated.

That is the policy in Washington state. I believe other states with insufficient staffing adopted similar policies. With how transmissible omicron was among vaccinated and unvaccinated, requiring asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic hospital staff to stay home for 7-10 days after testing positive would have caused many hospitals to shut down significant portions of their operations for much of December, January, and into February.

That policy by itself is sensible, as mildly symptomatic is cold like symptoms, and most people have worked through a cold before. They would properly wear N95s, be extra diligent about their hygiene, and preferably be assigned to the Covid units.

The unsensible portion of the policy is that an unvaccinated nurse or janitor (most physicians are vaccinated) who tested negative would not be allowed to work.

This combination of policies from the governor led to the nonsensical situation that a Covid positive nurse worked in the hospital while a Covid negative nurse stayed home. Even in your response, you acknowledge how crazy this is by calling it "fantasy land", but it did happen.

This, along with several other glaring policy mistakes, have damaged public health credibility.

 

[chessknt]

That is the policy in Washington state. I believe other states with insufficient staffing adopted similar policies. With how transmissible omicron was among vaccinated and unvaccinated, requiring asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic hospital staff to stay home for 7-10 days after testing positive would have caused many hospitals to shut down significant portions of their operations for much of December, January, and into February.

That policy by itself is sensible, as mildly symptomatic is cold like symptoms, and most people have worked through a cold before. They would properly wear N95s, be extra diligent about their hygiene, and preferably be assigned to the Covid units.

The unsensible portion of the policy is that an unvaccinated nurse or janitor (most physicians are vaccinated) who tested negative would not be allowed to work.

This combination of policies from the governor led to the nonsensical situation that a Covid positive nurse worked in the hospital while a Covid negative nurse stayed home. Even in your response, you acknowledge how crazy this is by calling it "fantasy land", but it did happen.

This, along with several other glaring policy mistakes, have damaged public health credibility.

Source required, please show me where the policy was for active symptomatic covid + providers to report for work.

 

[nimbus]

Source required, please show me where the policy was for active symptomatic covid + providers to report for work.

It was an emergency measure that has now expired. Asymptomatic/presymptomatic COVID+ were allowed to return to work immediately. The CDPH site has been updated with newer guidelines. But here’s a copy of the policy that was in effect during peak omicron. When I read it, I thought it was pretty f’d up.

 

[chessknt]

It was an emergency measure that has now expired. Asymptomatic/presymptomatic COVID+ were allowed to return to work immediately. The CDPH site has been updated with newer guidelines. But here’s a copy of the policy that was in effect during peak omicron. When I read it, I thought it was pretty f’d up.


View attachment 352084

That doesn't say symptomatic though...

 

[nimbus]

That doesn't say symptomatic though...

Correct. But we know people can spread infection before they are symptomatic or even when they never develop symptoms. Which is why the policy made no sense. They were probably trying to appease hospital administrators who claimed they wouldn’t have enough staff if it wasn’t allowed.

 

[chessknt]

Correct. But we know people can spread infection before they are symptomatic or even when they never develop symptoms. Which is why the policy made no sense. They were probably trying to appease hospital administrators who claimed they wouldn’t have enough staff if it wasn’t allowed.


View attachment 352089

Not saying that made sense per we but the hyperbolic example that I was replying to never happened. It is a fiction and needs to be called out because his argument seems to imply that public health officials are political hacks who lost credibility by making dangerous policies when convenient but that is a political spin news story not based on reality.

 

[Impromptu]

Here are the guidelines from the CDC where Covid positive hospital staff, even with symptoms, are allowed to work in certain staffing situations.
CDC contingency and crisis staffing guidelines
Our local health care system put out its own policies developed from these guidelines, though I am not going to publish them on the internet. There are multiple news stories that are easy to find from early to mid January that confirm this was a practice allowed in multiple states.

Now that that is out of the way, I would like to suggest that I have not seen any data that young, healthy unvaccinated people are the major cause of hospital systems being overwhelmed. Those being hospitalized are still mostly unvaccinated, but they have multiple risk factors, especially the elderly, obese, hypertensive, and diabetic. Those people are where the efforts at vaccination should have been made, not at young, healthy college students.

The vaccines were originally approved because of their effect on severe disease. But they were also found to be incredibly effective at preventing transmission of the original variant. Because that was so incredible, many promises were made about the vaccine ending the pandemic. In one way of thinking, the vaccines actually did end the pandemic of the original variant. But along came evolution.

Subsequent variants began chipping away at the vaccine's protective layer of shellac. The delta variant began causing "break through" infections, though the vaccines still protected against severe disease. Then along came omicron, and now omicron BA.2, and significant protection against transmission is practically gone.

Because vaccines currently provide little significant durable protection against transmission of omicron, and because young, otherwise healthy people are not the ones clogging up the hospitals when they get Covid, the vaccine mandates on young, otherwise healthy people will not accomplish the goals that they were originally set to have.

 

[nimbus]

Here are the guidelines from the CDC where Covid positive hospital staff, even with symptoms, are allowed to work in certain staffing situations.
CDC contingency and crisis staffing guidelines
Our local health care system put out its own policies developed from these guidelines, though I am not going to publish them on the internet. There are multiple news stories that are easy to find from early to mid January that confirm this was a practice allowed in multiple states.

Now that that is out of the way, I would like to suggest that I have not seen any data that young, healthy unvaccinated people are the major cause of hospital systems being overwhelmed. Those being hospitalized are still mostly unvaccinated, but they have multiple risk factors, especially the elderly, obese, hypertensive, and diabetic. Those people are where the efforts at vaccination should have been made, not at young, healthy college students.

The vaccines were originally approved because of their effect on severe disease. But they were also found to be incredibly effective at preventing transmission of the original variant. Because that was so incredible, many promises were made about the vaccine ending the pandemic. In one way of thinking, the vaccines actually did end the pandemic of the original variant. But along came evolution.

Subsequent variants began chipping away at the vaccine's protective layer of shellac. The delta variant began causing "break through" infections, though the vaccines still protected against severe disease. Then along came omicron, and now omicron BA.2, and significant protection against transmission is practically gone.

Because vaccines currently provide little significant durable protection against transmission of omicron, and because young, otherwise healthy people are not the ones clogging up the hospitals when they get Covid, the vaccine mandates on young, otherwise healthy people will not accomplish the goals that they were originally set to have.

It’s not common but young healthy people do end up very sick with Covid. Before the vaccine became available, we had a 35yo respiratory therapist get COVID and end up on ECMO for over 2months. He survived and was eventually discharged but he’s still not back to work.

 

[chessknt]

Here are the guidelines from the CDC where Covid positive hospital staff, even with symptoms, are allowed to work in certain staffing situations.
CDC contingency and crisis staffing guidelines
Our local health care system put out its own policies developed from these guidelines, though I am not going to publish them on the internet. There are multiple news stories that are easy to find from early to mid January that confirm this was a practice allowed in multiple states.

Now that that is out of the way, I would like to suggest that I have not seen any data that young, healthy unvaccinated people are the major cause of hospital systems being overwhelmed. Those being hospitalized are still mostly unvaccinated, but they have multiple risk factors, especially the elderly, obese, hypertensive, and diabetic. Those people are where the efforts at vaccination should have been made, not at young, healthy college students.

The vaccines were originally approved because of their effect on severe disease. But they were also found to be incredibly effective at preventing transmission of the original variant. Because that was so incredible, many promises were made about the vaccine ending the pandemic. In one way of thinking, the vaccines actually did end the pandemic of the original variant. But along came evolution.

Subsequent variants began chipping away at the vaccine's protective layer of shellac. The delta variant began causing "break through" infections, though the vaccines still protected against severe disease. Then along came omicron, and now omicron BA.2, and significant protection against transmission is practically gone.

Because vaccines currently provide little significant durable protection against transmission of omicron, and because young, otherwise healthy people are not the ones clogging up the hospitals when they get Covid, the vaccine mandates on young, otherwise healthy people will not accomplish the goals that they were originally set to have.

Do you think if they came out with updated variant specific boosters the unvaccinated would go get them? Of course they ****ing won't--it is a core aspect of their identity now like their football team and their religion, not some rational decision about erosion of protection due to viral evolution.

The emphasis in the young has always been about population wide health. The young are always invincible and ignore recommendations on their health but they can still spread disease. Vaccination could get rid of spread in some of them and protect the rare few who would have ended up sick enough to be hospitalized. They can also handle the vaccine just fine and if they wanted access to functional healthcare if they got appendicitis or a trauma then they needed to pitch in and do their part to curb the spread but we all know what they did instead.

As for the cdc guidelines I see what you are referencing in a crisis situation. I think if you tell the public they have a choice between the hospital being closed or being treated by someone with covid that isn't some kind of disinformation that erodes faith in the healthcare system. Maybe you feel differently but as someone who worked through the crisis (never that bad thankfully but close) I don't see that as confusing at all.

 

[LaryngoSpazz]

Do you think if they came out with updated variant specific boosters the unvaccinated would go get them? Of course they ****ing won't--it is a core aspect of their identity now like their football team and their religion, not some rational decision about erosion of protection due to viral evolution.

The emphasis in the young has always been about population wide health. The young are always invincible and ignore recommendations on their health but they can still spread disease. Vaccination could get rid of spread in some of them and protect the rare few who would have ended up sick enough to be hospitalized. They can also handle the vaccine just fine and if they wanted access to functional healthcare if they got appendicitis or a trauma then they needed to pitch in and do their part to curb the spread but we all know what they did instead.

As for the cdc guidelines I see what you are referencing in a crisis situation. I think if you tell the public they have a choice between the hospital being closed or being treated by someone with covid that isn't some kind of disinformation that erodes faith in the healthcare system. Maybe you feel differently but as someone who worked through the crisis (never that bad thankfully but close) I don't see that as confusing at all.

Fun to watch you backpedal from that didn’t happen source please to now seeing actual cdc recommendations and now saying well I’d rather be cared for by a covid positive individual over the hospital being closed.

Problem is you missed the point. The decision made by those in charge was let’s fire all the unvaccinated workers and then have covid positive workers who are vaccinated come to work. So the real option was would you rather be cared for by a covid negative unvaccinated worker or a covid positive vaccinated worker. Our “follow the science” public health experts chose the latter.

 

[Impromptu]

Back in August and September the delta variant was leading the charge toward becoming endemic. It was so infectious that I thought within 2 years practically everyone on earth would be exposed to it. In my proselytizing for the vaccine I emphasized that no matter how many precautions someone took they would likely be exposed to the coronavirus at some point in the future. Would they rather face it with a naïve immune system, or one that was already primed with memory cells.

The increased infectivity of the omicron variants sped up the timeline toward endemic. The UK's office of national statistics says that over 98% of their population has antibodies, either through exposure or vaccination. The USA likely has a similar level. I think we will see future waves of infections with new variants, but deaths per infection will continually decline. We started to see deaths per infection decline with the delta variant, and even more so with the omicron variant, and this is largely due to vaccination, and to a lesser extent post infectious immunity. If that trend continues, then the next wave will have even fewer deaths per infection.

I have often wondered why we are still using a vaccine that is specifically designed for the original variant, rather than the current variant. Likely it is too difficult to stay ahead of the current variant, while providing enough testing and proof that the new formulation is going to offer better protection from severe disease than the old formulation is providing.

 

[vector2]

.

Problem is you missed the point. The decision made by those in charge was let’s fire all the unvaccinated workers and then have covid positive workers who are vaccinated come to work.

What an idiotic false dichotomy. It's patently false because even if the overall small percentage of fired unvaccinated workers were back at work, the total number of covid positive workers was enough to cause worker shortages regardless.

Also, let's not pretend we both don't know that even when vaccination significantly reduced the likelihood of infection and transmission back in the alpha and delta days, these same people still weren't getting the shot and definitely deserved to get fired then.

 

[chessknt]

Fun to watch you backpedal from that didn’t happen source please to now seeing actual cdc recommendations and now saying well I’d rather be cared for by a covid positive individual over the hospital being closed.

Problem is you missed the point. The decision made by those in charge was let’s fire all the unvaccinated workers and then have covid positive workers who are vaccinated come to work. So the real option was would you rather be cared for by a covid negative unvaccinated worker or a covid positive vaccinated worker. Our “follow the science” public health experts chose the latter.

Try again--those recommendations were the same for vaccinated and unvaccinated providers. The original 'choice' presented was a negative unvaccinated worker vs. a + vaccinated worker. That chart in crisis mode has no restrictions in any category so any policy made using that chart would not have excluded the unvaccinated group.

Firing decisions are not based on science, never have been and nobody has claimed otherwise. No hospital was firing swaths of their workforce in crisis mode. During regular operations however should the hospital just keep a large portion of people on a workforce that don't share their values or meet their guidelines just in case they would be needed in a crisis? What if the doctor is addicted to drugs or the nurse has been reported for sexually abusing patients? Should we keep them on staff too just in case we are in a crisis and need them? What nonsensical business model would that be?

You don't even seem capable of comprehending the argument because you are so entrenched in your partisan COVID Trump swamp. The public health experts at the national and many at the state level actually did a ****ing great job under the circumstances they had to operate. Nitpicking their errors in retrospect while excusing the sheer stupidity of people walking away from a free miracle vaccine reflects far more on you than it does them.

 

[Impromptu]

It absolutely excluded unvaccinated workers in practical application because they had already been fired. It takes a long time to advertise, hire, and credential someone to fill a position. The crisis standards were only enacted for 1-2 months. The former workers were fired in the fall. It is far easier to have a current worker continue working than to find a new worker.

The mandates came at the command of federal and state governments. In press conferences the governor of my state uses the words "the science" and occasionally "the ultimate science" with absurd frequency. He believes everything he has done has been led by "the science".

Doing a "great job" under the circumstances only applies to initial conditions, not 2 years in, especially when there is no ability to publicly admit that certain initial policies were wrong once further knowledge has been obtained. Doubling down on bad policies increases public mistrust of public health officials.

 

[nimbus]

so entrenched in your partisan COVID Trump swamp.

Entrenched is the right word because Trump himself was encouraging people to get vaccinated and getting booed for it. Operation Warpspeed was the best thing his administration did. It literally saved millions of lives.