NBA protocols/Covid/Vaccine - Discussion thread

[G R E Y]

So it seems a lot of the silent holdouts changed their minds recently. It's interesting that even with the few who have gone public with their stance, those others we don't know about have been busy getting a shot.

Still with at least five teams being 100% vaccinated, this means that the average is still about one unvaccinated player per team. I wonder how many are from teams in areas where the players would face very stringent consequences. Seems like the quick step to the vaccinated side has been made despite the strong opinions of the public holdouts which is encouraging.

I thought that with even 10% of players choosing to remain unvaccinated it could potentially create a competitive advantage or disadvantage, but the smaller the number of holdouts, the more level the playing field.

The league has done a good job of presenting the vaccine as a choice, and that players have a choice in facing certain consequences, but they don't choose what the consequences are. Seems to have made a push. It'll still be interesting how far players of teams in states with stricter mandates (ie/ Nets, GSW) take it.

[ElectricMayhem]

We're all going to have egg on our face after mocking players for doing their own research when we see them come out with a double blind reviewed research paper:

Irving, K.A., Isaac, J. J., & Wiggins, A.C. (2022). The negative effects of COVID-19 vaccinations on subjects' sense of independence and autonomy. New England Journal of Medicine. 4(3), 217-328. https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7827-5-15

[Noodlesoop]

The point is inoculation doesn't stop transmission at nearly a high enough rate to justify mandates. Even if were to agree "public health" supercedes individual freedom.

We disagree there. If the rate of transmission were reduced by just one percent due to the vaccine, that would make a drastic difference. I believe 43 million Americans have had COVID (myself included). If 1% of us hadn't gotten it, that would be 430,000 Americans. If we assume the same death rate of 1.6%, then 68,800 of those 430,000 human beings would still be alive, and that's just in the United States. That's not including severe cases or long-termers, either. Think about the numbers, consider that each one is a human being, and tell me again why the transmission rate being less than perfect matters again.

What you neglect to point out here is the lessening of the severity of symptoms and the lightening of the burden on the hospital system.

I will never understand why anyone would oppose the best way to fight a potentially deadly disease.

Because this assumes zero risk from the vaccine themselves which isn't true. And that's just the known side effects as of today. There's literally no telling what type of long term effects that could be later associated with these jabs.

Again anybody who decides for themselves the risk of the vaccines are worth any side effects should take it without any judgment or penalties. Like wise any of us who don't want to assume any long term risk with the jab should be entitled to the same lack of judgment and penalties. Especially since these jabs are so leaky that such a high percentage of people are still being infected and transmitting the virus anyways.

Correct, there isn’t zero risk in the short term from the vaccines, there’s mild side effects in lots of cases and in very few cases more extreme reactions. Overall, the risk of taking the vaccine is much lower than if you were to get COVID (unless you’re very young arguably).

Can you answer me two questions on the long term side effects please:
- what exactly are you worried about/expecting to happen?
- what previous instances has there been of long term side effects from vaccines?

People who state ‘we don’t know the long term side effects of these viruses’ seem to think we’re all of a sudden going to grow an extra limb or something equally ridiculous in ten years …

P.S. I’ve told you previously that the use of the word ‘leaky’ immediately indicates you have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to vaccines/COVID so might be worth eradicating it from your vocabulary in these debates.

[Noodlesoop]

Gonna be hilarious this season when the NBA experiences a ton of breakthrough cases... and we realize a “mandate” is worthless (I didn’t say vaccine is worthless). NYT today reporting 55% of those hospitalized now in the USA at this moment are vaccinated. Let them start counting breakthrough cases again (not just hospitalized or dead) so we can get a more complete picture of where it’s spreading.

I strongly believe this is already endemic (most scientists at minimum seem to agree it will become endemic soon). This thing is here to stay forever now. Learning to cope with it is far more viable than pretending it can be eradicated. Better therapeutics, better health. That’s how we will “beat” this IMO.

Ughhj i dont see such an article, you mean their article today that said 'mandate on vaccinations largely working ' lol.

The only data i found was about IRELAND where 54% hospitalized were vaxed but the country is 90%+ vaxed so clearly it helps reduce hospitalizations- if the other 10% accounts for half of hospitalizations.

Cite your 55% in america. Maybe you misread bc 55% americans are vaccinated. Otherwise dont spread misinformation.

It’s not an article, it’s their data sheet they update. But they put vaccinated percentage to the right of hospitalized and death tallies, which led me to believe that was referring to those categories, could just be the way the chart is. Regardless we’ve seen plenty of breakthrough recently in other highly vaxxed countries (Israel and Australia being most popular) and even states here.

Vermont is more vaxxed than anyone lately and they still saw a big spike recently. My overall point being breakthrough cases are happening at a higher rate potentially than they know (because they aren’t counting them). So forcing one to vaccinate or not in the NBA isn’t necessarily gonna stop a bunch of guys from ending up in protocols.

I personally think at this point 20 players in the NBA being unvaxxed won’t have much impact. These are pro athletes usually under 30, with no commorbidities. The number of American’s in the under 39 group that have died from Covid contributed situations (not even necessarily FROM Covid, some WITH) covid is less than 20k. The average number of commorbidities in people dying is between 3-4.

Covid is not a threat to these players. It’s not statistically a threat to their young children either. The CDC death count by age is available online. It isn’t me being a “conspiracy theorist”.

You have been asked many times to post a link to this article or ‘data sheet’ so I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and ask you one last time to produce it before I report you for spreading misinformation.

Here’s a link sent with love from the UK (quickly google search, there’s was loads to choose from funnily enough)
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/covid-hospitalisations-unvaccinated-delta-b1914238.html%3famp

It shows that 73% of those who were in hospital due to the delta variant between 1st Feb and 29th Aug 2021 were unvaccinated. 14% had one dose of the vaccine and only 10% were double vaccinated. As we started mass vaccinations in Jan and we decided to wait three months to provide the second dose (get more first doses in the arms of those who needed them quickly) our double vaccination rate will have been around 5-10% at 1st Feb and 80-85% 29th august (it’s now 89.8%). Therefore, there would have been even fewer hospitalisations if more people had gotten the vaccination sooner.

Take that for ‘data’.

[Noodlesoop]

So it seems a lot of the silent holdouts changed their minds recently. It's interesting that even with the few who have gone public with their stance, those others we don't know about have been busy getting a shot.

Still with at least five teams being 100% vaccinated, this means that the average is still about one unvaccinated player per team. I wonder how many are from teams in areas where the players would face very stringent consequences. Seems like the quick step to the vaccinated side has been made despite the strong opinions of the public holdouts which is encouraging.

I thought that with even 10% of players choosing to remain unvaccinated it could potentially create a competitive advantage or disadvantage, but the smaller the number of holdouts, the more level the playing field.

The league has done a good job of presenting the vaccine as a choice, and that players have a choice in facing certain consequences, but they don't choose what the consequences are. Seems to have made a push. It'll still be interesting how far players of teams in states with stricter mandates (ie/ Nets, GSW) take it.

The league has done an excellent job to get to 95% and it seems likely the 22 or so hold outs will reduce even further too when the reality of not playing and the restrictions kick in.

Say you end up with 15 players who end up not taking the vaccine, at that point, it’s not a big deal. At least half of those will be 7th-15th spots on the roster so them not playing/cutting them isn’t going to have a material impact on the NBA’s competitiveness. The only issue is the high profile names like Beal and flat earther (who misses so much time and wants to retire anyway) sitting out.

[Hsker4Life]

The CDC hasn’t bee clear about much of anything.


I don’t think any other countries in Europe are forcing the youngest students to wear masks.I know the UK is not. The CDC thinking pre-K and K students can effectively wear masks for 6+ hours a day isn’t realistic, nor is it needed.

The types of masks students are wearing, plus their habits, makes masking in schools almost pointless. Mandating masks in the youngest age group does more harm than good. Distractions, discomfort, acne, unable to read/display facial expressions, reading/pronunciation of words, etc.

But I know…two particular alarmists will chime in, “We HaVe tO pRoTEct ThE cHilDrEN, wHy DO YOU nOt CARe aBoUt tHE KIds?!?!”

[Statlanta]

The remaining 5% have to be guys on lengthy contracts or the top players. It's too easy for franchises to cut/waive/trade or eliminate role players or two-way players.

[taikibansei]

We're all going to have egg on our face after mocking players for doing their own research when we see them come out with a double blind reviewed research paper:

Irving, K.A., Isaac, J. J., & Wiggins, A.C. (2022). The negative effects of COVID-19 vaccinations on subjects' sense of independence and autonomy. New England Journal of Medicine. 4(3), 217-328. https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7827-5-15

You linked to a 2007 article titled "Lifestyle impact and the biology of the human scrotum"--which includes close-up photos of dog scrotums--and which does not mention COVID-19 vaccinations once. After looking at those photos...I am a bit curious now about the "interests" of the people who gave you a thumbs up....

Oh, wait, I just looked at the "author" list. This was a joke. My bad!

[nikster]

Vermont is more vaxxed than anyone lately and they still saw a big spike recently. My overall point being breakthrough cases are happening at a higher rate potentially than they know (because they aren’t counting them). So forcing one to vaccinate or not in the NBA isn’t necessarily gonna stop a bunch of guys from ending up in protocols.

The state that with the lowest cases per capita and deaths per capita is proof that the vaccines arent that effective. You cant make this stuff up

[Buckets22]

We're all going to have egg on our face after mocking players for doing their own research when we see them come out with a double blind reviewed research paper:

Irving, K.A., Isaac, J. J., & Wiggins, A.C. (2022). The negative effects of COVID-19 vaccinations on subjects' sense of independence and autonomy. New England Journal of Medicine. 4(3), 217-328. https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7827-5-15

Are they mentioning the flatness effect you feel after getting vaccinated?

[hauntedcomputer]

Guys with six weeks of part-time college who think they are smarter than the sum of human medical knowledge advising people who couldn't even handle footnotes on their eighth-grade term papers to "do their own research."

Score for the "Shut up and dribble" crowd.

[Noodlesoop]

We're all going to have egg on our face after mocking players for doing their own research when we see them come out with a double blind reviewed research paper:

Irving, K.A., Isaac, J. J., & Wiggins, A.C. (2022). The negative effects of COVID-19 vaccinations on subjects' sense of independence and autonomy. New England Journal of Medicine. 4(3), 217-328. https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7827-5-15

Are they mentioning the flatness effect you feel after getting vaccinated?

Is that where you infinitely keep walking in a straight line without the ability to end up back where you started?

[michaelm]

The CDC hasn’t bee clear about much of anything.


I don’t think any other countries in Europe are forcing the youngest students to wear masks.I know the UK is not. The CDC thinking pre-K and K students can effectively wear masks for 6+ hours a day isn’t realistic, nor is it needed.

The types of masks students are wearing, plus their habits, makes masking in schools almost pointless. Mandating masks in the youngest age group does more harm than good. Distractions, discomfort, acne, unable to read/display facial expressions, reading/pronunciation of words, etc.

But I know…two particular alarmists will chime in, “We HaVe tO pRoTEct ThE cHilDrEN, wHy DO YOU nOt CARe aBoUt tHE KIds?!?!”

Sophistry I am afraid. That it is impractical for a subset of children to wear masks doesn't mean ICU beds are not being stretched.

[Pointgod]

NYT today reporting 55% of those hospitalized now in the USA at this moment are vaccinated.

Link?

Just for fun, I scraped the NYT API for the following 3 word combos, updated within the past 48 hours:
(primer below for anyone who likes programming at all)
https://towardsdatascience.com/scraping-news-and-articles-from-public-apis-with-python-be84521d85b9

"COVID" "breakthrough" "55%"
"COVID" "vaccinated" "55%"
"COVID" "breakthrough" "tracker"
"COVID" "vaccinated" "tracker"

and I also subbed out COVID for COVID-19 and Coronavirus

No hits. Scraping isnt an exact method but it works more often than not. I dont think we should take the above % at face value, I would imagine such a number would be big-time fodder for antivaxxers all over the bird app.

It would also be way out of lockstep with the Bay Area, who leaned heavily towards unvaccinated people being active patients towards end of August, and incredibly so with regards to the ICU

For **** and giggles I went through 24 hours of the New York Times Twitter feed. And here’s all the Covid related stuff:

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

I got to 12 hours before giving up. If this poster actually read and followed the New York Times he’d be more informed than he currently is. And why is it so hard to admit that he was wrong? This is the biggest problem today, making arguments based on faulty information and then never going back to make a correction or question the sources.

[D.Brasco]

As someone who works in the biomedical community, it is insane to see how much misinformation is out there. According to CDC, the unvaccinated are 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID, 11 times more likely to die, and 5 times as likely to get infected compared to vaccinated individuals. If you look at the map, vaccinated states are doing far better per capita than unvaccinated states. Even people already infected with COVID do better with hybrid immunity according to preliminary studies.

I still hear a bunch of people saying the vaccines are experimental. The vaccines are FDA approved and vaccine developers didn’t skip any testing steps, but conducted some of the steps on an overlapping schedule to gather data faster to gain emergency approval. Plus, unlike many other vaccines development, there were hundreds of thousands of volunteers and patients. The safety standards were no different than any of the other clinical trials.

As for mRNA, the technology as been around since the 1990s and research has been going on for years. It makes no sense to fear the side effects. Historically speaking, vaccines do not have side effects past 6 months. Also, mRNA dissolves in your body. It doesn't just hang out for 20 years and suddenly remerge to attack you. It is not some AI machine. mRNA doesn't enter the nucleus of your cells. Whatever side effects there are, they are not as bad as being stuck in a ventilator dying from COVID. Or organ damage. Or long term breathing problems.

Lastly, I keep hearing people say that athletes are strong and they don't need the vaccine like "sick" and "fat" people. Do any of you watch the UFC? Fighters are some of the fittest people on earth and COVID knocked them out for months. Also, players are walking around other people too, not just other athletes.

It is crazy how much misinformation is there out there. I remember reading about a guy saying he didn't want the vaccine because he didn't want to the first guy to take it. He wasn't. By the time the vaccine was available, hundreds of thousands of people have already taken it in clinical trials. Then I read recently another person said she needs more "clinical trial III data." LOL. As if she knows how to read data. Unless you are a doctor or has a Ph.D in the field of biomedicine, you are not going to be able to draw conclusions to anything. I work in the preclinical field so I know how hard it is to interpret data. There could be many different factors.

Sorry just because you work in the "biomedical community" I'm supposed to take your advice on vaccinations over my cousins postings on Facebook and Tucker Carlson?

Nice try.

[ecogen]

Sorry just because you work in the "biomedical community" I'm supposed to take your advice on vaccinations over my cousins postings on Facebook and Tucker Carlson?

Nice try.

Spot on. Also, "biomedical"? Is that even a real word?

[LightTheBeam]

The 2 questions I have are --

1. Why aren't the vaccinated players forced to test often? We have enough data that says they can still have and spread covid. And if the vaccine works as intended they wouldn't even know they were sick, creating a super spreader situation.

2. They have anti-body testing. Shouldn't those players not be subject to the same thing as an unvaccinated person who hasn't been sick before? We know that active natural immunity is more effective than the vaccine.

Just seems like a show at this point.

[Mamba81p]

Covid "vaccines" are not sterilizing. It's not like the smallpox vaccine that kills the virus. Guess what folks, you take the jab, you can STILL GET COVID. and yes, people with strong immune systems, like pro athletes, get it and recover quickly by and large. Yes the threat of long covid or even death exists; but the statistical risk of a Beale or Kyrie dying of covid incredibly small.

It's become total orthodoxy and 99% of the people commenting haven't taken the time to study the issue and just repeat the word "vaccine" over and over.
Strike: Derailing (Political rhetoric)

Maybe you should have taken more to study. If you had the smallpox vaccine, you could still have gotten the virus.
The vaccine was 95% efficient, and it was actually deadly in some(rare) cases, but still.

[ATLTimekeeper]

If inconvenience and peer pressure convinced more people to take the shot, then they really weren't all that confident in their decision to avoid the shot to begin with.

[FNQ]

We know that active natural immunity is more effective than the vaccine.

Once again, this is not true, and doesn’t become more true if constantly mentioned