theaardvark
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« Reply #649 on: January 11, 2022, 04:02:52 PM » |
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Have to wonder about the deaths... I know, most are with co-morbidities, and that is how we are defining COVID deaths and I agree with that, these are people that were fragile but stable, and COVID killed them.
Some are willing to dismiss these deaths as not "due to COVID" and only want "COVID deaths" to be people who were otherwise healthy and succumb to the virus.
I regard it more like a car accident victim who had late stage cancer. Sure, cancer would have killed them eventually, but the accident was the cause of death. And possibly, someone who wasn't as fragile might have survived the car accident. We still don't consider cancer as teh case of death, 100% it was the car accident.
COVID and underlying conditions, to me, is the same thing. Sure, if the patient was healthier, they would have survived the virus, but they did not. The virus killed them. Had they avoided the virus, they'd be alive today. So, regardless co-morbidities, this is a death caused directly by COVID and should be attributed as such.
Vaccines are proven to reduce severity of illness, and while they may reduce spread/infection as well, the most important factor TODAY is the lessening of the severity of the illness. I don't care about cases, breakthroughs and asymptomatic infection in vaxxed people, those do not significantly add to the deaths. Anti-vaxxers keep harping on "Vaxxed still get it, why bother vaxing?" not understanding that the chances of bad outcomes drop by a factor of 20 if you are vaxxed. You are 20 times more likely to die if you get it unvaxxed. Its like playing Russian Roulette, but being forced to do it 20 times instead of just once. Maybe my stats are off a bit, but you get my drift.
We know the case numbers are worthless now, positive testing % means nothing when you aren't testing everyone who wants a test and are only testing people who have a positive RAT, or are symptomatic and have co-morbidities. Plus, no one is contact tracing RAT positives, or even tracking them. Its all on the honour system.
ICU stats are, IMHO, the key indicator of how the community is reacting, and I think a stat we are missing is how many COVID deaths are happening without medical intervention. How many of the 19 died at home, or in the Emergency or hospital bed without ever getting to the ICU. We know, even though the vast majority of the population is double vaxxed, and more than 30% of Manitobans are now boosted as well, the majority of deaths are in the unvaxxed population. We know they dominate the COVID case hospital stats as well, and ICU beds. These are mostly avoidable stats, had they just gotten the jabs.
Breaking down these death stats a little finer might bring more light to the reality of vaxxed vs. unvaxxed. I think, for some people, they are avoiding the perceived issues that come with vaccines that the anti-vax crowd is spreading through their mis-information campaigns, and embracing horse dewormer, and now urine drinking, while claiming the vaccine makes you magnetic, has a tracking chip in it, or makes you sterile or affects your period. I think, in the back of their minds, they are relying on the medical system to save them should the virus actually happen to them. They trot out stats on how it is 98% survivable, not thinking that 2 out of 100 is not really great odds. Guys like Tucker Carlson are embracing treatments like monoclonal antibodies, hugely expensive and hard to come by and involving far more "I don't know what's in there" than any vaccine.
I know, we have to honour and respect the individual's wishes when it comes to their choices, but in this case, I really think we're past that. Polio, smallpox, measles, all victims of people trusting medicine to save them from horrible diseases. We now have far better science than they did back then, and could have wiped this out early. But somehow, unfortunately, it got politicized. "Alternate facts" would have been laughed at 10 years ago, but a truly scary number of people quote that concept now as if it makes sense.
We need to work through this, not sure how you convince someone that has consumed this much koolaid that its OK to get vaxxed. It shouldn't take a loved one dying to get someone to consider getting a jab, but lets hope that those lives lost at least help make it real to those communities and influence them to get the jab.
/rant
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