The next person is called a Dentist

I know several people in this category. It's sort of a dual wait and see.

1. Wait and see if the vaccine causes any problems.
2. Wait and see if the COVID situation gets worse or better.

If COVID goes away/herd immunity/variants are no longer deadly, I think they'll never get it. But if the virus is still spreading and deadly (the worsening being at varying degrees depending up on the person) AND at that point there are no major problems (again, the definition of "major" varying by the person) yet with the vaccine, then they'll get the vaccine.

In short, what I've heard isn't wait and see for any specific amount of time, but "wait and see if we get to a point where I'm more worried about the virus than the vaccine."

lol

Years ago I did standardized patient acting with a group working with medical professionals on how to get people to take an HIV test. The dental students were, in general, terrible.

I have one in my household, and I can give her answer. She was very afraid of possible reproduction implications, which is among the main reasons studies on medications go as long as they do. What if it does cause high chance of birth defects in people that get pregnant after they are immunized? I think the risk is pretty low, but can anyone honestly say there is zero chance?
She has already had Covid once, and hoped that gave her some protection while she continued to watch what came. Now, because of the delta variant she is getting her first shot on Friday.



I can understand the hesitancy of some. And given history, I especially understand it among African Americans.

Ben, that just seems to be a recipe for getting the virus at this point.

Wait till you meet a few Optometrist. The only group that has a higher quack ratio are Chiropractors. (I am not saying all are quacks, but there are many both professions that are).

It was less quackery than an absolute certain arrogance that they knew best. My patient just didn't respond well to being told, you have to. The dentists generally didn't know what to do when I said, no I don't have to and I won't.

Now the country doctors from the MS delta, those providers knew how to listen and persuade gently. I'd be at yes with them in under 5 minutes some days. They ended up being the model for the other trainees.

I never had to go to an Optometrist until recently (knock on wood) and it was a (very) mild shock that they're practically all working from inside retail showrooms. I guess it makes plenty of obvious sense for convenience, but it just feels strange/wrong to have a doctor hand you off directly to a sales person.

Try telling that to someone who is more worried about the vaccine than the virus. I did.

"I've gone over a year without catching the virus. What makes you think I'm going to get it all of a sudden next week???" smh

I had a friend I talked to who is still on the fence. He says he isn't an anti-vaxxer but he has health problems (obesity, high blood pressure, etc) that he's concerned could cause a reaction and since he's divorced and on his own, he's afraid if he has a reaction he'll die.

I countered that he could let me know when he gets the vax and I'd keep in contact, and if he got the virus and got really sick, what would the difference make if he was all alone?

Some people just need to be educated by the coldness of nature I guess.

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

Fear of the vaccine and not the virus....again....overestimating not only their own knowledge, but overestimating their response to BOTH the virus and the vaccine, because the reality is, they don't know ANY of those answers. Admitting that would be the first step toward progress.

The person just after is called Rand Paul.

My wife is an optician, and her office (which is an optometrist's office) is way more medical than retail. My daughter office (also optometrist) is more of a combo. They have a big sales floor for glasses and such, but then her doctor sells a bunch of snake oi....I mean "homeopathic" medicines. They have a cryo-booth, and a ozone treatment machine, and he sells a bunch of different oils and vitamins and such. His office is makes some real money.

Wait and see is just, wait and see if other people will fix it for me so I don' t have to do anything, don't have any civic responsibility and can continue to go around and say that they proudly never got vaccinated and they are here to tell everyone about it.

I don't know if this is attributable to African-American hesitancy or just another example of "wait and see"...

This is an amazing anecdote: https://t.co/7QfKutiEzn pic.twitter.com/FM7GmdRxRu

— Nick Baumann (@NickBaumann) July 28, 2021

Just remarkably dumb and selfish people.

I desperately want to know the process involved when one of these dopes says they need to research things further. Is that just scrolling Facebook and looking for anti-vaccine troll posts? Do they go to their public library and look up "vaccine" in the card catalogue?

Or, is this just something they say to try to deflect a reporter's question when the answer is 100% that they're never taking it.

Edit: Montez also said about the vaccines, "I haven't caught COVID yet so I don't see me treating COVID until I actually get COVID", so, while it's nice that they're bringing in experts it doesn't seem like the holdouts have the cognitive ability to grasp anything they say.

But, I think the NFL and the players have at least succeeded in exceeding the vaccinating rate in the general population, particularly the age demographic they're dealing with. But it's still shocking to me that there's so many holdouts when life as an NFL unvaccinated player is just going to be completely different than the life for a NFL vaccinated player. Those who don't get the shots aren't just indifferent, they are dug in, and putting their own "research" over their lifestyle, chance of postponed games and forfeits, etc. True believers. True, dumbass believers.

Cobbling together a few stories, it sounds like WFT has Ron Rivera a cancer-survivor head coach that has directly begged his players to get vaccinated, they brought in someone who worked on the vaccine to speak with the players, the league is claiming something like 85% vaccination rate overall, but Rivera implies that WFT's vaccination rate is closer to 50%.


...what's going on over there? It seems very unlikely that's just isolated coincidence, the front office is going through it's own extended cultural implosion, and they literally have no identity. I wish I was watching a Netflix documentary about this right now.

For some it is political, but they can't say that. Like I'm guessing Beasely has to show his allegiance to Trump so he can't do it. And probably a part that wants the virus to spread more. But to not look like a simp, he makes up a bunch of excuses about not having information despite the league offering up one of the creators of the vaccine as a source.

Others are likely just dumb people who got suckered into the anti-vaxx shit online and can't be convincned. Again, they have to hide it behind "need more info" because the truth that they're just stubborn morons is worse.

Also funny to me because all these NFL guys stuff themselves with supplements, pain killers, and probably even steroids. They play a sport that is almost guaranteed to give you brain damage. But this is what they are concerned about.

Maybe we have found a reason.

Go back to March of 2020 and google. Pelosi, Bloomberg and each of the dem candidates all saying things like this:


I do think this vaccine BS from republicans is much worse - but the second a republican gets back in the white house - expect democrats to once again hope for bad things for this country (just like the republicans are right now).

It's a different world than it was in the 90s or even early 2000s. The party out of power now almost gets giddy when bad things happen to the country - and that isn't a good thing.

Let's not romanticize the past. It was 1994 when Bill Kristol wrote his famous letter to the GOP saying that they must stop healthcare reform because if it passed people would never let the GOP revoke it.

Yeah, but that's a policy debate from the 90s where many people felt the government couldn't run health care as well as private PPOs for the cost. I think Kristol still honestly believes a national healthcare plan is bad for the country.

I think that's different than saying a republican politician who has already had the covid vaccine saying "Don't get the covid vaccine (that has been shown to be safe)"
or
A democrat politician who's made a killing off the market saying "The stock market should go down because of our dufus president".

Neither side can even fake being "genuine" or looking out for the best interest of the country when you say things like that.

You do realize how that quote doesn't prove what you alleged? I mean, that's Dems criticizing the President because the stock market went down, not wishing for it to go down because he's the President.

I'm not sure talking down the stock market as a political issue right as we are in the beginning grips of a pandemic is a statement made with the best interest of the country in mind. But, I guess we disagree. I'm sure many republicans don't see an issue with advising caution on a new Covid vaccine - but I disagree with them as well.

I was just reading a lengthy article on this subject, and I got there from an aggregator, so I was lazily half-way through it before realizing that it was a Mother Jones article saying Fox News is the answer/problem (spoiler!)....so I won't call it unbiased, but they make a compelling case with lots of meat:

The Real Source of America’s Rising Rage – Mother Jones

I think it's pretty clear that we mostly live in echo chambers where each side keeps having their message reinforced without even thinking (letting alone empathizing) with the other side. But, this is starting to get more political than this thread was based on.

My original point was that republicans should be held accountable by the public for the BS on not accepting the vaccine earlier.

You said that in the 2000s the two parties worked together, but there's written evidence the GOP started its strategy of giving the Dems no bipartisan accomplishments in the 90s.

And there was Dan Burton shooting watermelons in his backyard to prove Bill Clinton was a murderer.

Arles still in here trying to both sides this shit.

One party is actively turning fascist and anti-democratic in front of our very eyes. But sure, because you saw some left wingers cheer Trump's failure, that means both sides are equally at fault

I think is Trump is worse than anything on the democrats (which is why I voted against him both times). My point was I don't see this changing whether a D or R is in the white house. Half the political spectrum will be rooting against this country when not in power and I don't feel like it was that bad in the 80s, 90s or even early 2000s. I think social media, the cable TV specialization and the hunt for only like-minded resources have exacerbated this IMO.

But, as I said in the initial post, what the republican Anti-vaxers did in Biden's first 6 months was reprehensible.

"The huge increase in government aid prompted by the coronavirus pandemic will cut poverty nearly in half this year from prepandemic levels and push the share of Americans in poverty to the lowest level on record." https://t.co/Ib9KLeH3NY @JasonDeParle

— David Beard (@dabeard) July 28, 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/u...-programs.html

Now watch the backlash around a hundred reasons why too few poor people are bad. Regardless, good to see that aid reached those that needed it.

Also makes me mad that despite significant spending Germany did barely keep it from growing too much, so i'm not judging per se, just flabbergasted how obviously it is possible yet it took a pandemic.

Polling has consistently shown that people who *have* gotten the vaccine generally think the risk of hospitalization & death from contracting COVID is much higher than it statistically is. We need to jettison this idea that 'we' are the ones who understand the facts and 'they' are the ones who don't. There are very few Americans who have an accurate picture of the known facts regardless of what snapshot in time you use a reference.

And no, nothing Arles said is both-sidesing this. Reading comprehension is beneficial :). He's said multiple times that he thinks the Republicans have been worse here.

Be that as it may, as long as there are doctors recommending against it, it's hard to blame their patients for not wanting to get the vaccine. I mean, we can't say 'do what the medical professionals tell you, but our medical professionals, not the one you've trusted with your health for decades'.

Ive been to the doctors a lot over the years and have had to become in tune with my body and its needs, but I would not follow my doctor if they told me not get vaccinated.

Would that open a doctor to a mal practice suit if one of their patients died of covid after telling a patient not to get vaccinated?

The slight bit of befuddlement I feel and perhaps a bit of bemusement I feel watching my Facebook wall become filled with people that were so hard core against the vaccine now getting covid the day of or day before they were supposed to get their first shot is a very weird feeling. I want to grab them and say, “see!!! Now it’s too late!!!” But I don’t.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Whew, back to normally scheduled programming on non-political, Covid related matters.

I'm ready to travel again. Been to UK and it wouldn't be my first choice. Personally and selfishly, being full vaccinated, I like the announcement. But I think its a little premature for the UK with the unknowns of the Delta variant e.g. it's just starting to hit the US.

The issue here is sustainability. The level of spending, heavy-handed approach by the Fed etc. was entirely appropriate in the short-term but is likely to cause inflationary issues in the medium and long-term and would also require much higher taxes to sustain long-term, which would have other knock-on consequences. We've known for a very long time that poverty can be reduced given enough spending, i.e. UBI or whatever alternatives one might want to propose, but there are unintended consequences to those approaches.

A good compromise for now assuming Disney is also doing the other stuff such as limiting no. of people in stores, wiping things down all the time (e.g. seats) etc.

Yeah, I am trying to get back over to the UK as soon as possible and I am desperate to not have to wear 8 layers of clothing while I am there. All that being said, I think I will wait for a few more months.

Here's a shared FB post I saw this morning that's related to some of the discussion here. I don't know these folks, but they're apparently good friends of some old friends of ours who have moved to Florida. Based on her profile, she appears to be in medical sales of some sort, so I doubt they're traditional "anti-vaxxer" types.



It sounds like this couple just....really didn't give it much thought. "We're young, healthy, don't get the flu shot. We'll be fine." I wonder if a lot of people aren't so much actively "eff you, other people who might get sick," as they just don't really think beyond their own little bubbles.

I was doing deep dives of scientific papers on the clinical trials. It is so hard for me to get into the mindset of people who aren't paying way too much attention.

It's like the college football fan who loses sleep b/c a possible 3* recruit sent a cryptic tweet that might imply he's more into another school versus his neighbor across the street who is pretty sure last year's QB graduated, but he's not sure who the new guy is.

"God is good," just has trouble getting the message out on vaccines.

To me, the latter is just a passive form of the former. I mean, at this point, it is beyond obvious that your health decisions on Covid affect others. It's just selfishness - an unwillingness to care about anyone but yourself and your family, IMO. I'm not listening to the "we just didn't appreciate how serious this really was" crap anymore.

I just...do people just not understand viruses? It's not like fighting a small animal, where "hey, I'm young and strong, I can take this thing on."

Where's the link to the "how many 5 year olds can you take?" thread?

Heh. I would suspect that the folks posting in this thread are relative Covid grognards compared to the general population. I mean, we’ve come to this conclusion about many things political here. Why wouldn’t this be the case as well? This thought also reminds me of how frequently I’ve heard or read “if you are worried about the virus, it is your right to wear a mask, but I am not worried about the virus, so I shouldn’t have to wear one.“ I’ve assumed that mindset came out of “active” selfishness, because OF COURSE they know that a mask protects others, and not themselves, right??? But I’m starting to wonder how many of them don’t even realize that.

I see that in Facebook a lot. These same people are all mask-exempt as well, apparently.

Heh, I thought about a pitbull (which might be hard for anyone, really), a pug, a raccoon, a pig, and...a 5yo. Thought best to leave it generic. :)

Exactly. If we needed a 1/1 comparison to what the Republicans are doing now, the Democrats would have needed to tell people to sell off all their stocks and divest from all their USD, because the US economy was going to crash.