Wizards Board COVID-19 Thread

[dckingsfan]

What bugs me is that inability and unwillingness of the media to properly articulate how small the Covid risk is for healthy, young people (and people who have already survived infection). Data available from Scotland (which is quite good because it factors age and comorbidities) shows a total of 10,395 Covid deaths so far out of 5.4 million Scots. Of those 10,395 deaths, only 704 (6.7%) have been to people without comorbidities. And only 10 have been to people under age 40 with no comorbidities. Those 10 deaths represent just one-tenth of one percent of total Covid deaths. And assuming roughly 40% of Scots have now been infected by Covid so far, the data shows that just 12 Scots per million who are under 40 without comorbidities have died after contracting Covid. With a Covid risk so low, why take on the risk of a vaccine? Even if the vaccine is almost certainly safe, you really aren't improving your odds of living enough for it to be worth it. For comparison, the odds of dying in a car accident, each year, is 520 per million.

There is a good reason why you want everyone vaccinated 12&over from a public policy perspective and yes, the media has been reporting that kids are much less at risk (read the NYTimes - they pushed this early and often).
1) more than 1/2 of the hospitalizations are now coming from the under 18-49 demographic (and most unvaccinated)
- more hospitalizations and other folks die (I think that is a good reason)
- our hospital systems are fragile, The US health system wasn’t built to withstand a pandemic!
https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/2021/9/14/22650733/us-covid-19-hospitals-full-texas-alabama
- when an unvaccinated person goes to the hospital, we all pay for it (is that a good reason?)

2) long haulers for those under 50 is a real thing (even it if is a 1% number, that is absolutely huge)

3) The US population is obese putting a large portion of those younger folks at risk.

4) Denmark has 80% of those 12&over vaccinated and are now wide open with little to no issues with their younger population.

5) Somewhere between 660,000 and 1,000,000 American Lives to date.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=cumulative-deaths&tab=trend

[tontoz]

https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/COVID19_5.html

[nate33]

What bugs me is that inability and unwillingness of the media to properly articulate how small the Covid risk is for healthy, young people (and people who have already survived infection). Data available from Scotland (which is quite good because it factors age and comorbidities) shows a total of 10,395 Covid deaths so far out of 5.4 million Scots. Of those 10,395 deaths, only 704 (6.7%) have been to people without comorbidities. And only 10 have been to people under age 40 with no comorbidities. Those 10 deaths represent just one-tenth of one percent of total Covid deaths. And assuming roughly 40% of Scots have now been infected by Covid so far, the data shows that just 12 Scots per million who are under 40 without comorbidities have died after contracting Covid. With a Covid risk so low, why take on the risk of a vaccine? Even if the vaccine is almost certainly safe, you really aren't improving your odds of living enough for it to be worth it. For comparison, the odds of dying in a car accident, each year, is 520 per million.

There is a good reason why you want everyone vaccinated 12&over from a public policy perspective and yes, the media has been reporting that kids are much less at risk (read the NYTimes - they pushed this early and often).
1) more than 1/2 of the hospitalizations are now coming from the under 18-49 demographic (and most unvaccinated)
- more hospitalizations and other folks die (I think that is a good reason)
- our hospital systems are fragile, The US health system wasn’t built to withstand a pandemic!
https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/2021/9/14/22650733/us-covid-19-hospitals-full-texas-alabama
- when an unvaccinated person goes to the hospital, we all pay for it (is that a good reason?)

2) long haulers for those under 50 is a real thing (even it if is a 1% number, that is absolutely huge)

3) The US population is obese putting a large portion of those younger folks at risk.

4) Denmark has 80% of those 12&over vaccinated and are now wide open with little to no issues with their younger population.

5) Somewhere between 660,000 and 1,000,000 American Lives to date.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=cumulative-deaths&tab=trend

Nearly all of those hospitalizations are to those with comorbidities. They should absolutely get vaccinated, including obese children. The young healthy people aren't the ones clogging hospitals (except kids with RSV). Here is CDC data showing that just 5.1% of hospitalizations are to those without comorbidities, and presumably most of them are old. Vaccinating young healthy people is only going to shave maybe 1% off of total hospitalizations (while adding some number who will be hospitalized for myocarditis).

And long haulers are the most overstated thing throughout this whole crisis. The number of people with truly bad, truly long term symptoms is really small. Most of it is just hypochondriacs. Some of these long-hauler studies have control groups complaining about symptoms in higher numbers than the actual test group!

[dckingsfan]

https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/COVID19_5.html

I think the herd immunity clan is having a hard time wrapping their collective heads around Delta. If we had followed that advice and we would be pushing 2M dead by now.

You know what they say, 100,000 here, 100,000 there and pretty soon it is a real number - well, to some.

[nate33]

https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/COVID19_5.html

I think the herd immunity clan is having a hard time wrapping their collective heads around Delta. If we had followed that advice and we would be pushing 2M dead by now.

You know what they say, 100,000 here, 100,000 there and pretty soon it is a real number - well, to some.

We ARE on a herd immunity path! That how this ends. Clearly, vaccination alone isn't going to do it.

[dckingsfan]

https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/COVID19_5.html

I think the herd immunity clan is having a hard time wrapping their collective heads around Delta. If we had followed that advice and we would be pushing 2M dead by now.

You know what they say, 100,000 here, 100,000 there and pretty soon it is a real number - well, to some.

We ARE on a herd immunity path! That how this ends. Clearly, vaccination alone isn't going to do it.

Reminder 1: that was said back in summer last year
Reminder 2: Delta
Reminder 3: Vaccine and getting Covid is the cat's ass
Reminder 4: Getting the vaccine for everyone over 12 first keeps our healthcare system from being overburdened
Reminder 5: If we had listened to the herd immunity folks (not you, The Great Barrington Folks) we would have 2M dead
Reminder 6: A new variant could mean that it doesn't end, Covid will decide when it is done with us

[nate33]

Reminder 4: Getting the vaccine for everyone over 12 first keeps our healthcare system from being overburdened.

No. People under 50 without comorbidities, and people who have recovered from prior infection are doing virtually nothing to overburden the hospitals. I'm all in favor of getting vaccines for everyone else, but those two groups aren't the problem and vaccinating them will have virtually no impact on total hospitalizations.

[tontoz]

Older people are more likely to be vaccinated.


https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccination-outcomes.aspx

Quoting from the death column i case anyone misses it.

"deaths among the unvacinnated have tended to effect younger and healthier people than the comparatively rare deaths among vaccinated people."

[dckingsfan]

Reminder 4: Getting the vaccine for everyone over 12 first keeps our healthcare system from being overburdened.

No. People under 50 without comorbidities, and people who have recovered from prior infection are doing virtually nothing to overburden the hospitals. I'm all in favor of getting vaccines for everyone else, but those two groups aren't the problem and vaccinating them will have virtually no impact on total hospitalizations.

Thanks for conceding the other points.

First the key is to define those without comorbidities. That would include the obese, asthma, etc. as well as other comorbidities that a person might not even know they had. And genetics too, they found a cluster of variants on chromosome 3 that are associated with severe illness and respiratory failure in COVID-19 patients.

So, often we don't know (and the individual doesn't know) if someone has a comorbidity. And often, the individual doesn't know if they have had Covid previously.

I'll take kids first. 37% didn't have comorbidities. And yes, that has a material effect on the pediatric healthcare system.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2780706

Then some work in Tennessee where 31.2% had no comorbidities. Still, a material effect on the healthcare system.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/10/21-1070_article

Clearly from a policy perspective - getting everyone vaccinated over the age of 12 would be very helpful.

[nate33]

Reminder 4: Getting the vaccine for everyone over 12 first keeps our healthcare system from being overburdened.

No. People under 50 without comorbidities, and people who have recovered from prior infection are doing virtually nothing to overburden the hospitals. I'm all in favor of getting vaccines for everyone else, but those two groups aren't the problem and vaccinating them will have virtually no impact on total hospitalizations.

Thanks for conceding the other points.

First the key is to define those without comorbidities. That would include the obese, asthma, etc. as well as other comorbidities that a person might not even know they had. And genetics too, they found a cluster of variants on chromosome 3 that are associated with severe illness and respiratory failure in COVID-19 patients.

So, often we don't know (and the individual doesn't know) if someone has a comorbidity. And often, the individual doesn't know if they have had Covid previously.

I'll take kids first. 37% didn't have comorbidities. And yes, that has a material effect on the pediatric healthcare system.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2780706

Then some work in Tennessee where 31.2% had no comorbidities. Still, a material effect on the healthcare system.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/10/21-1070_article

Clearly from a policy perspective - getting everyone vaccinated over the age of 12 would be very helpful.

Look at the Tennessee study more carefully. The risk factors that really matter are diabetes, obesity, cardiac anomalies. Everything else had a risk multiplier of less than 2. Of the Big Three risk factors that matter, only 5.1% of the sample had them (obesity 2.5%, diabetes 1.4%, cardiac 1.2%). When your sample size is only children, and 95% of the children have none of the risk factors that matter, then of course you are going to get a pretty big percentage of healthy kids who end up hospitalized. That doesn't mean it's a lot of kids hospitalized in aggregate.

If I'm reading Table 1 right, of the 43465 kids who went to the ER or the doctor, only 4302 were actually admitted to the hospital. and of those 4302, 62.9% of them had underlying conditions (mostly obesity, diabetes and cardiac). And of the 1289 with "severe illness, 78% of them had underlying conditions. So out of 5% of kids with the Big Three risk factors, they formed the majority of the 78% of severe illnesses.

[doclinkin]

And long haulers are the most overstated thing throughout this whole crisis. The number of people with truly bad, truly long term symptoms is really small.

Anecdotally, having caught it early (March of 2020) I will say as a relatively healthy relatively youthful person: it suuuuucked. The long tail of it affected stamina, resting heart rate, energy level, concentration. My heart would pointlessly race when I was sitting watching TV. I'd get out of breath walking up stairs, shoot, even cuts took longer to heal. It basically acted like sand in the gears, the machine still works, but not as efficiently. Regaining my stamina has been an uphill battle, not impossible, not hospitalization level illness, just harder work. If I could have taken a jab to avoid that, I would have.

As for the rest, COVID is the #7 killer in the United States, yes ahead of accidents. You can say: well it's less likely to kill ME... sure, but you share the world with many other people, and with Delta and other variants increasing, the risk factors for all increase. Kids kill their teachers. The guy on a bus kills the bus driver's dad. The stats show you are 71% less likely to transmit even the Delta variant to family members in the same household. The risk of the jab being so minimal, seems like you are doing your part to reduce the spread, and if you are not completely self interested even if you are healthy it is worth a tiny risk to become a firewall against death for people you don't even know. The funny fat guy who drives the beer truck that delivers to your local bar. Even a hefty guy has a right to not die avoidably. No doubt there are people even on this forum who caught it and will never be heard from again. ]

We can get to herd immunity through death and infection or by artificial means. I am astounded by how effective and relatively safe this vaccine has proven to be. And how quickly it was developed. Doubtless there will be some long term effects that show up, likewise there are sure to be long term effects of having caught COVID. But when you consider that the yearly flu vaccine is at most 30% effective in any given year, to have a vaxx against a brand new disease with 90% effectiveness, is pretty remarkable. I am proud of science and how swiftly the brightest minds managed to calculate and implement a solution. There are years when I doubt human progress will help save the world, but seeing something like this gives me hope. Science fiction has even given up on the concept that science may cure humanities troubles, except Star Trek I suppose, the rest are all dystopian dirges for lost civilization. Dangerous robots and the like. Seeing this vaxx and seeing it save the lives it does, I dunno, I am happy there are still some people out there who ignore our pessimism and simply solve the problems in front of them. I mean: thanks science. Glad to know you are still out there doing work.

[nate33]

And long haulers are the most overstated thing throughout this whole crisis. The number of people with truly bad, truly long term symptoms is really small.

Anecdotally, having caught it early (March of 2020) I will say as a relatively healthy relatively youthful person: it suuuuucked. The long tail of it affected stamina, resting heart rate, energy level, concentration. My heart would pointlessly race when I was sitting watching TV. I'd get out of breath walking up stairs, shoot, even cuts took longer to heal. It basically acted like sand in the gears, the machine still works, but not as efficiently. Regaining my stamina has been an uphill battle, not impossible, not hospitalization level illness, just harder work. If I could have taken a jab to avoid that, I would have.

I caught it back in February. I had a headache for 3 days and I was fatigued enough that I didn't feel like working out for a week. After that, I went back to working out. It took me another week to get back to 90% of my prior conditioning level, but it took maybe 4 more weeks to get back that final 10%. So, technically, I would count as a long-hauler. But looking back 6 months later, I hardly even remember those 4 weeks when I wasn't quite right conditioning wise. It's not like it was some kind of life-changing event.

[doclinkin]

And long haulers are the most overstated thing throughout this whole crisis. The number of people with truly bad, truly long term symptoms is really small.

Anecdotally, having caught it early (March of 2020) I will say as a relatively healthy relatively youthful person: it suuuuucked. The long tail of it affected stamina, resting heart rate, energy level, concentration. My heart would pointlessly race when I was sitting watching TV. I'd get out of breath walking up stairs, shoot, even cuts took longer to heal. It basically acted like sand in the gears, the machine still works, but not as efficiently. Regaining my stamina has been an uphill battle, not impossible, not hospitalization level illness, just harder work. If I could have taken a jab to avoid that, I would have.

I caught it back in February. I had a headache for 3 days and I was fatigued enough that I didn't feel like working out for a week. After that, I went back to working out. It took me another week to get back to 90% of my prior conditioning level, but it took maybe 4 more weeks to get back that final 10%. So, technically, I would count as a long-hauler. But looking back 6 months later, I hardly even remember those 4 weeks when I wasn't quite right conditioning wise. It's not like it was some kind of life-changing event.

Right, that is two healthy individuals with long term effects, and varied reactions. Seems like people who have anything mildly wrong have their symptoms worsened or complicated by COVID infections. Women's periods take longer and have decreased flow, mens hormones are affected, anything from a swollen prostate to sperm count are affected by the infection. Trying to find the study, but here is one paragraph from a study on menstruation and COVID:

"the pathogen that causes COVID-19, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), enters cells through its receptor, angiotensin converting enzyme-2 (ACE2) (Hoffmann et al., 2020). Organs with high expression of ACE2 might therefore be attacked by this virus (Zhang et al., 2020; Zhu et al., 2020). ACE2 has been reported to be highly expressed in adult male Leydig cells of the testis (Douglas et al., 2004), and male COVID-19 patients have been reported to have abnormal sex hormone concentrations compared with healthy men, suggesting that male reproductive endocrine function might be injured by viral infection"

And as far as long tail, studies seems to suggest that people often recover, or think they have, and then when something happens down the line they discover it is simply harder to recover, or they have additional side effects. Sand in the hinges. The fact that COVID piggybacks on white blood cells means that if the body is sending blood to help heal whatever issue crops up, it ends up complicating the healing process and delivering a pathogen exactly to where you have an issue.

Here's one study on that:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210629144312.htm

In any case, the side effects of COVID infection, even when mild, are potentially nasty enough that it seems basically smart to take a preventative shot. We take vitamins, supplements, shoot we give our kids flintstones vitamins or whatever to prevent theoretical illness brought about by poor nutrition. But you are far more likely to catch COVID than rickets. If taking a jab now prevents complications long term, it seems only smart and properly cautious to ensure people are inoculated against an infection that as a species we have no natural immunity to.

[tontoz]

Jayson Tatum started using an inhaler after recovering from Covid. He was using it months later. He doesn't have asthma.

Post COVID-19, Jayson Tatum says he still needs inhaler to open lungs up before games

Back in January, Jayson Tatum tested positive for COVID-19 and missed three weeks as the virus hit him pretty hard. Weeks after his return he talked about how the virus still impacted his breathing.

It’s mid-April, and Tatum told reporters he is now using an inhaler before games to help open up his lungs.

“I’ve talked to guys that said it took months for them to kind of catch their breath, and get their wind back. And I think I’m kind of on the same track with that,”

https://nba.nbcsports.com/2021/04/14/post-covid-19-jayson-tatum-says-he-uses-inhaler-to-open-lungs-up-before-games/

[dckingsfan]

And long haulers are the most overstated thing throughout this whole crisis. The number of people with truly bad, truly long term symptoms is really small.

Anecdotally, having caught it early (March of 2020) I will say as a relatively healthy relatively youthful person: it suuuuucked. The long tail of it affected stamina, resting heart rate, energy level, concentration. My heart would pointlessly race when I was sitting watching TV. I'd get out of breath walking up stairs, shoot, even cuts took longer to heal. It basically acted like sand in the gears, the machine still works, but not as efficiently. Regaining my stamina has been an uphill battle, not impossible, not hospitalization level illness, just harder work. If I could have taken a jab to avoid that, I would have.

I caught it back in February. I had a headache for 3 days and I was fatigued enough that I didn't feel like working out for a week. After that, I went back to working out. It took me another week to get back to 90% of my prior conditioning level, but it took maybe 4 more weeks to get back that final 10%. So, technically, I would count as a long-hauler. But looking back 6 months later, I hardly even remember those 4 weeks when I wasn't quite right conditioning wise. It's not like it was some kind of life-changing event.

Since we are doing the anecdotal thing... my next door neighbor has been down for a year - late 30s with kids. The neighbors are still bringing her dinners.

But anecdotal isn't the point. Since everyone is going to get Covid even a small percentage of folks getting long haulers is material on our healthcare system. Long haulers is overstated in the media but understated in terms of the effect on our very fragile healthcare system. Those that are vaccinated are much less likely to get long haulers.

Do we not get that folks are dying because we don't have hospital capacity. Do we still not get the externality of those that don't get vaccinated?

[dckingsfan]

No. People under 50 without comorbidities, and people who have recovered from prior infection are doing virtually nothing to overburden the hospitals. I'm all in favor of getting vaccines for everyone else, but those two groups aren't the problem and vaccinating them will have virtually no impact on total hospitalizations.

Thanks for conceding the other points.

First the key is to define those without comorbidities. That would include the obese, asthma, etc. as well as other comorbidities that a person might not even know they had. And genetics too, they found a cluster of variants on chromosome 3 that are associated with severe illness and respiratory failure in COVID-19 patients.

So, often we don't know (and the individual doesn't know) if someone has a comorbidity. And often, the individual doesn't know if they have had Covid previously.

I'll take kids first. 37% didn't have comorbidities. And yes, that has a material effect on the pediatric healthcare system.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2780706

Then some work in Tennessee where 31.2% had no comorbidities. Still, a material effect on the healthcare system.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/10/21-1070_article

Clearly from a policy perspective - getting everyone vaccinated over the age of 12 would be very helpful.

Look at the Tennessee study more carefully. The risk factors that really matter are diabetes, obesity, cardiac anomalies. Everything else had a risk multiplier of less than 2. Of the Big Three risk factors that matter, only 5.1% of the sample had them (obesity 2.5%, diabetes 1.4%, cardiac 1.2%). When your sample size is only children, and 95% of the children have none of the risk factors that matter, then of course you are going to get a pretty big percentage of healthy kids who end up hospitalized. That doesn't mean it's a lot of kids hospitalized in aggregate.

If I'm reading Table 1 right, of the 43465 kids who went to the ER or the doctor, only 4302 were actually admitted to the hospital. and of those 4302, 62.9% of them had underlying conditions (mostly obesity, diabetes and cardiac). And of the 1289 with "severe illness, 78% of them had underlying conditions. So out of 5% of kids with the Big Three risk factors, they formed the majority of the 78% of severe illnesses.

Okay, we are down to one of the 6 reasons that it makes sense to vaccinate all of those over 12 from a policy perspective.

I will concede this (the weakest of the reasons). The overall point still stands. Even if we assume only those with comorbidities are going to the hospital (false of course).

BTW/Anecdotal: I have one of the ER docs at Houston Children's hospital that comes and hangs with the other ER docs. I asked him about this quite some time ago. He said a large portion of parents don't know that their kids have a comorbidity upon their first visit to the hospital.

Second point: What is the proportion of the population over 18 that has a comorbidity? And what portion of the group knows they have a comorbidity.

I'll concede the point but it doesn't matter. From a policy perspective this a red herring. I am all for any vaccine mandates at this point where that vaccine has been approved. We are seeing that the rest of the population is becoming less empathetic to those that are unvaccinated.

[tontoz]

BTW/Anecdotal: I have one of the ER docs at Houston Children's hospital that comes and hangs with the other ER docs. I asked him about this quite some time ago. He said a large portion of parents don't know that their kids have a comorbidity upon their first visit to the hospital.

I heard there are hospitals in Houston putting up tents to handle overflow patients.

[nate33]

Thanks for conceding the other points.

First the key is to define those without comorbidities. That would include the obese, asthma, etc. as well as other comorbidities that a person might not even know they had. And genetics too, they found a cluster of variants on chromosome 3 that are associated with severe illness and respiratory failure in COVID-19 patients.

So, often we don't know (and the individual doesn't know) if someone has a comorbidity. And often, the individual doesn't know if they have had Covid previously.

I'll take kids first. 37% didn't have comorbidities. And yes, that has a material effect on the pediatric healthcare system.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2780706

Then some work in Tennessee where 31.2% had no comorbidities. Still, a material effect on the healthcare system.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/10/21-1070_article

Clearly from a policy perspective - getting everyone vaccinated over the age of 12 would be very helpful.

Look at the Tennessee study more carefully. The risk factors that really matter are diabetes, obesity, cardiac anomalies. Everything else had a risk multiplier of less than 2. Of the Big Three risk factors that matter, only 5.1% of the sample had them (obesity 2.5%, diabetes 1.4%, cardiac 1.2%). When your sample size is only children, and 95% of the children have none of the risk factors that matter, then of course you are going to get a pretty big percentage of healthy kids who end up hospitalized. That doesn't mean it's a lot of kids hospitalized in aggregate.

If I'm reading Table 1 right, of the 43465 kids who went to the ER or the doctor, only 4302 were actually admitted to the hospital. and of those 4302, 62.9% of them had underlying conditions (mostly obesity, diabetes and cardiac). And of the 1289 with "severe illness, 78% of them had underlying conditions. So out of 5% of kids with the Big Three risk factors, they formed the majority of the 78% of severe illnesses.

Okay, we are down to one of the 6 reasons that it makes sense to vaccinate all of those over 12 from a policy perspective.

I will concede this (the weakest of the reasons). The overall point still stands. Even if we assume only those with comorbidities are going to the hospital (false of course).

BTW/Anecdotal: I have one of the ER docs at Houston Children's hospital that comes and hangs with the other ER docs. I asked him about this quite some time ago. He said a large portion of parents don't know that their kids have a comorbidity upon their first visit to the hospital.

Second point: What is the proportion of the population over 18 that has a comorbidity? And what portion of the group knows they have a comorbidity.

I'll concede the point but it doesn't matter. From a policy perspective this a red herring. I am all for any vaccine mandates at this point where that vaccine has been approved. We are seeing that the rest of the population is becoming less empathetic to those that are unvaccinated.

I just think your efforts at vaccinating the young and healthy, particularly the ones with natural immunity, are misguided and mostly wasteful. All emphasis should be on vaccinated those over 50 with comorbidities. Their risk is literally hundreds of times greater than that of young healthy people. And I think the health authorities would have more credibility if they focused on these groups because the data is so clear and obvious that vaccination is a massive benefit for them. It's better than gaslighting young people (and their mothers) into thinking Covid is coming for them. My son's good friend has so much anxiety every day when he goes to school. It's ridiculous when the Covid threat for kids is commensurate with influenza.

[dckingsfan]

BTW/Anecdotal: I have one of the ER docs at Houston Children's hospital that comes and hangs with the other ER docs. I asked him about this quite some time ago. He said a large portion of parents don't know that their kids have a comorbidity upon their first visit to the hospital.

I heard there are hospitals in Houston putting up tents to handle overflow patients.

They are actively trying to move them to hospitals with available beds (that are staffed). The wait is hours and sometimes more than a day. The problem isn't beds or a place to put them - there just isn't the staff to man the beds.

And it isn't just Covid patients. The unvaccinated are literally killing other folks...

The ER doc down the street said the standard of care has fallen off a cliff. And we wonder why we are at near to 1M Covid + Covid related excess deaths.

[dckingsfan]

Look at the Tennessee study more carefully. The risk factors that really matter are diabetes, obesity, cardiac anomalies. Everything else had a risk multiplier of less than 2. Of the Big Three risk factors that matter, only 5.1% of the sample had them (obesity 2.5%, diabetes 1.4%, cardiac 1.2%). When your sample size is only children, and 95% of the children have none of the risk factors that matter, then of course you are going to get a pretty big percentage of healthy kids who end up hospitalized. That doesn't mean it's a lot of kids hospitalized in aggregate.

If I'm reading Table 1 right, of the 43465 kids who went to the ER or the doctor, only 4302 were actually admitted to the hospital. and of those 4302, 62.9% of them had underlying conditions (mostly obesity, diabetes and cardiac). And of the 1289 with "severe illness, 78% of them had underlying conditions. So out of 5% of kids with the Big Three risk factors, they formed the majority of the 78% of severe illnesses.

Okay, we are down to one of the 6 reasons that it makes sense to vaccinate all of those over 12 from a policy perspective.

I will concede this (the weakest of the reasons). The overall point still stands. Even if we assume only those with comorbidities are going to the hospital (false of course).

BTW/Anecdotal: I have one of the ER docs at Houston Children's hospital that comes and hangs with the other ER docs. I asked him about this quite some time ago. He said a large portion of parents don't know that their kids have a comorbidity upon their first visit to the hospital.

Second point: What is the proportion of the population over 18 that has a comorbidity? And what portion of the group knows they have a comorbidity.

I'll concede the point but it doesn't matter. From a policy perspective this a red herring. I am all for any vaccine mandates at this point where that vaccine has been approved. We are seeing that the rest of the population is becoming less empathetic to those that are unvaccinated.

I just think your efforts at vaccinating the young and healthy, particularly the ones with natural immunity, are misguided and mostly wasteful. All emphasis should be on vaccinated those over 50 with comorbidities.

Those over 50 are mostly vaccinated - at least the ones that are going to get vaccinated (although we are down to under 15% that now say they will never get the vaccine). Guess what - those under 50 now make up the majority in the ERs and ICUs. Those folks that aren't vaccinating are costing us oodles of money and killing off others because they can access those services (not to mention the reduced standard of care).

That those under 50 have a reduced chance of getting Covid or going to the hospital is a RED HERRING. Those under 50 are clogging up our healthcare systems - there is no way around that. And kids with Covid are stressing the children's hospitals.

But let's take your notion to its logical conclusion. Let's say from a public policy perspective we didn't push to get those under 50 vaccinated. Well, we would be in a lot worse shape in terms of Covid deaths, excess deaths due to Covid and long haulers.

The problem with all this obfuscation, disinformation and misinformation is that it is actually killing folks.