Are any of you facing a job applicant who will not get a COVID vaccine? Our hospital did not issue it's own vaccine mandate, but now has the CMS mandate, but the rumors are the religious exemptions will be fairly liberal. I anticipate this woman would be granted a religious exemption, but I'm now having many doctors on the inpatient team say they would not want to work with someone who is not vaccinated for COVID. As the lead doctor, I'm facing the reality of being chronically short staffed, and I think it's likely coloring my opinion that we really need everyone we can get who is clinically competent, and not getting a vaccine is not a deal breaker for me. What do you all think? Ultimately we can't hire someone nobody wants to work with.
non vaccinated job applicants
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It's a deal breaker. A clinician who will not get vaccinated for COVID-19 does not practice evidence based medicine for themselves, their family, or community. What makes you think they will practice evidence based medicine in the clinic? They endanger everyone around them either due to personal cowardice or politics.
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Agreed. And if your other staff has already been clear they are not okay with working alongside an unvaccinated colleague (and you are already short staffed) you may risk losing better staff by bringing on this person.
I have dealt with short staffing as well and I definitely understand that getting a psychiatrist in today's market is no easy task. If you can find a way to pass on an antivax doctor, though, I would encourage doing so.
I have dealt with short staffing as well and I definitely understand that getting a psychiatrist in today's market is no easy task. If you can find a way to pass on an antivax doctor, though, I would encourage doing so.
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I think this is a perfect way to phrase it. The lack of adherence to and support for clear evidence based practice personally calls into question their professional judgement. I think it's a great way to phrase it from an administration standpoint as well.
Would you hire a person who says they don't believe in any medication whatsoever for major depressive disorder? There's probably more of an actual argument to be made from that standpoint than against the COVID vaccine but I'd have a hard time seeing any mainstream psychiatric clinic hiring that person.
I mean obviously run it all by HR. I'm confused about religious exemptions in general. The mRNA vaccines don't use aborted fetal tissue and even Christian Scientists can take vaccines as long as they don't put their faith in them.
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Not a big deal, in grand summary.
*I just deleted and edited out my response due to current political atmosphere not supportive of anything less than opinions more aligned with Wolfgan22 above*
*I just deleted and edited out my response due to current political atmosphere not supportive of anything less than opinions more aligned with Wolfgan22 above*
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Is that stance based on science?
If it wasn't for the CMS mandate, I would support a hospital who is short on staff to persuade workers to join by claiming there is no shot mandate. Unvaccinated help is better than no help. After all, unvaccinated help was good enough during 2020 and those former heroes are now pariahs. Why the change now besides different political climate?
I wouldn't call it cowardice to go against the majority. How are they a danger if vaccines work?
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I respect you a great deal on this forum, so I am curious what your thoughts are. I'm not inclined to argue or castigate anyone. I promise I will refrain from further argument or rebuttal, I'm really just curious.
Feel free to PM me.
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Not sure how politics plays into reading JAMA articles or listening to infectious disease experts. Everyone's welcome to their own opinion on things that are not evidenced based medical practice, but as a doctor you are ethically/duty bound to follow EBM or have a very compelling reason you are deviating from it in that specific instance.
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Some people worry about the potential unknown long term adverse events from the mRNA vaccines, though there is no known evidence they will be harmful. I had this understandable concern initially. For me, it is cowardly to place others at risk of dying this year of COVID because of my own uncertainty about the future. My best friend since childhood died of COVID-19 this year. He was unable to be vaccinated due to a having previous bilateral lung transplant. My mother nearly died of COVID-19 last year and had to have life saving lung surgery. Perhaps it is courageous to go against the majority, but for me, courage is best seen in service to others, not myself.
Secondly, vaccines only work in protecting the vulnerable in a community if most people who are medically able to get the vaccine do get vaccinated. To me it is cowardly and selfish to be a free loader and let others guarantee my community's safety. People look to us to lead in healthcare, and I believe we should do the best we can. Individual freedom means less to me if the people I care about aren't here to enjoy it, too. Although I am sometimes embarrassed to say the cliché, I do care about my patients, too.
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If you've dropped the "R" word, all bets are off. Religion is a protected class.
VAERS reporting increased drastically compared to previous years so evidence of adverse effects are there. So if there ends up to be long-term adverse effects, is there recourse? Or are the pharmaceutical companies free from judgement?
I totally understand nurses' reluctance to take it, especially if they want to give birth in the future. If the baby ends up damaged in some way, who will bear the cost?
What about with the mandate driving away able-bodied workers and there isn't enough resource to take care of the community? It may be cowardly to demand others get shots to assuage one's own fears at the expense of the community.
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Come on now. What, "cancel culture" gonna come for ya? Argue away if you think differently, just be prepared for people to argue back. Nobody's making you edit that post "due to the political atmosphere" on a anonymous forum. Have you seen the freakin anesthesia forums?
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AD04, you are promoting the idea that the vaccine may cause infertility or birth defects. Do you have evidence suggesting that would be the case? As physicians, we are supposed to do our best to follow the evidence. I'm just curious what evidence leads you to believe this should be a serious consideration for people.
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Uh yeah, cause everyone was getting shoved down their throats to report every cough and rash a patient had in any timeframe after getting the COVID vaccine to VAERS. I wonder how many doctors even knew what VAERS was before 2021. Not to mention the general public, who was also encouraged to report basically ANYTHING that happened after their vaccine. However, VAERS also did its job. We actually picked up on the things that had possible statistical significance (ex. clots after the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, myocarditis).
There's literally no evidence about the fertility thing. At all. I could say "I understand the nurses reluctance that they could go into renal failure 10 years from now from the COVID vaccine" and it'd have the same weight. It's the classic "autism vaccine" kind of argument.
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I'm not sure if the question about what is different is serious, but no vaccine was available in 2020 (the EUA arrived in December 2020). The people who continued to treat patients in person despite significant personal risk did something genuinely brave and praiseworthy, and obviously criticizing them for not taking a vaccine when none was available is nonsensical. In 2021 the vaccine has become widely available and we have seen what happened as billions of people (per a google search 3.26 billion fully vaccinated worldwide currently) have taken COVID vaccines. Working unvaccinated during a pandemic because you have no choice is clearly different from working unvaccinated during a pandemic even though a highly effective vaccine is easily available.
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oh yes, the lovely "how are unvaccinated people a threat to the vaccinated if vaccines work" argument that any grad of med school should be able to easily explain why
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Actually, not exactly. Being religious doesn't mean doing whatever you want or never having social consequences for doing so.
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Actually, no, the increase in VAERS reporting is not evidence of more adverse effects beyond what has been studied in actual studies. That can easily reflect that more people are more aware of the program and using it to push popular antivax beliefs, to confirm their confirmation bias.
Follow up studies can of course be fashioned to answer any questions raised by VAERS, and that's really what it's there for. This has in fact happened and identified issues with a drug on the open market. And yes, in those cases someone takes responsibility, usually the government.
I'm a physician pregnant at 33 weeks, and I got both Covid shots while pregnant and am planning a 3rd while still pregnant. Why is it more understandable for nurses to be concerned about receiving the covid vaccine? What does pregnancy have to do with this? We have more evidence of how awful outcomes are for pregnant women and their babies if they get covid, than we have for the vaccine.
Remember, the vaccine doesn't have to be proven to be totally without harm. It just has to be better than getting covid where risk of getting covid is high (an in general, it is). That's how basically every single intervention in medicine is judged. Very little do we do that does not carry risks of its own.
In any case, the overwhelming reaction to mandates has been more people vaccinated, not a substantial loss to the workforce. And in any case it is insane for healthcare workers of all people to be refusing to be vaccinated on behalf of their community without actual medical contraindication.
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Also, none of the major major religions are anti-vaccination. If one claimed a religious exemption, they had better be an actual Dutch Reform Church or Christian Scientist, otherwise they are simply a liar. And, suddenly claiming to be one of these religions for political, cowardly, or self serving reasons isn't ok. Lying is the opposite of professionalism, and a sin according to just about any religion. To answer OP, I would never hire a person with questionable ethics, and I wouldn't want to work with such a person, either. You've gotten by without them so far. I wouldn't want to expose vulnerable patients, some of whom may have cancer or other high risk conditions.
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What I haven't understood are these get vaccinated or get tested mandates. They have them for workplaces, concerts, etc. I wouldn't go to a concert right now, but if I did, I'd much rather be around an all-tested group than a heterogeneous mix of vaccinated or tested.
I am vaccinated and in general if I had to pick between the two, I'd rather be around people who are tested regularly than who are vaccinated. Other people being vaccinated doesn't greatly increase my safety. Keeping someone home who is infectious, which you could be whether vaccinated or not, is a bigger boon. Of course, you have to test often enough that there's a good chance of keeping the person home—but even keeping them home for a bit longer than they otherwise would have been is helpful. The research I've read shows that twice weekly testing is enough to keep people at home in a way that reduces the chance of transmission.
The largest advantage I can see to being around people who are vaccinated is that they are probably more cautious in general, as reflected by their choice to get vaccinated. Of course, anybody can catch COVID, but it seems like there are scenarios in which you are more likely to.
In general, I would prefer to see testing mandates for everyone over vaccine mandates. I'm not against vaccine mandates. I just don't see them as being as beneficial as testing mandates, at least for short term safety. Long term, it seems like nobody really knows what will happen.
I am vaccinated and in general if I had to pick between the two, I'd rather be around people who are tested regularly than who are vaccinated. Other people being vaccinated doesn't greatly increase my safety. Keeping someone home who is infectious, which you could be whether vaccinated or not, is a bigger boon. Of course, you have to test often enough that there's a good chance of keeping the person home—but even keeping them home for a bit longer than they otherwise would have been is helpful. The research I've read shows that twice weekly testing is enough to keep people at home in a way that reduces the chance of transmission.
The largest advantage I can see to being around people who are vaccinated is that they are probably more cautious in general, as reflected by their choice to get vaccinated. Of course, anybody can catch COVID, but it seems like there are scenarios in which you are more likely to.
In general, I would prefer to see testing mandates for everyone over vaccine mandates. I'm not against vaccine mandates. I just don't see them as being as beneficial as testing mandates, at least for short term safety. Long term, it seems like nobody really knows what will happen.
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Basically, testing is more expensive and can be uncomfortable. In a world where we cannot get people to get vaccinated or wear a mask if exposed or unvaccinated, twice weekly testing is difficult at best. You aren't wrong though, birch.
At one point, there was no evidence of birth defects for thalidomide. And here we are today. Do you have evidence it will do no harm? Those who are reluctant and want to wait and see before making a decision have good reason to do so. As physician, we are first supposed to do no harm. And we are supposed to respect people's autonomy.
No, the vaccine is getting shoved down people's throat and those who have a contrary opinion gets shouted down. There is a lot more VAERS reporting. You can explain it by increased awareness if it makes you feel better. You can't rule out increased risk of harm from the vaccine.
Sure, it's easy to say there is "no evidence about the fertility thing" but you have no skin in the game. Are you going to pay if evidence comes up in the future? Or are you going to hide behind just following guidelines? If you are unwilling to pay should there be harm, you shouldn't force others to get it if they don't want it.
Please explain why.
Congratulations. You're willing to take the risk while other women aren't.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
- C.S. Lewis
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Frankly, I can't believe we have to have this discussion in a forum with physicians.
The COVID vaccine does not cause infertility. That myth was debunked months ago. How are the vaccinated at risk by the unvaccinated you ask? Is that a serious question? Because it makes me think anyone who can't answer it hasn't picked up a medical journal or even a newspaper in the past two years. The VAERS website is not proof of anything.
Viral Posts Misuse VAERS Data to Make False Claims About COVID-19 Vaccines - FactCheck.org
Social media posts repeatedly misuse unverified data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System to falsely claim that COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous, and even lethal. But the government database is not designed to determine if vaccines cause health problems.
The current general atmosphere is not about politics. It's just not supportive of anything less than evidence-based medicine especially within the medical community. And for good reason. There is more than ample evidence that vaccines work and if this person refuses to be vaccinated, while it's their choice, they don't get to be hired. It's really as simple as that.
Our patients have no choice. They are admitted where they are admitted. They don't deserve to die because of selfish docs who won't or can't understand the evidence behind vaccines, especially as mental illness is linked to worse outcomes with Covid. I consider it malpractice for physicians not to be vaccinated while working in a hospital. At least in outpatient, a patient has a choice. When you work in a hospital, you should be required to be vaccinated.
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I will say that a fair argument in favor of your point is that we tell pregnant women essentially the same thing about most medications and interventions. Minimize exposures when possible, safety data is limited due to lack of prospective/RCT due to ethical concerns. Eventually over many years we gather a lot of retrospective data indicating likely safety (or lack thereof) but only thanks to the women who accepted the risk of being on a medication with limited pregnancy safety data.
That said, we'll likely have a pretty compelling amount of data soon given how many women were likely vaccinated before/while pregnant over the last year.
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Of course I had concerns and weighed the pros and cons of trying for a baby and being pregnant vis a vis covid and the vaccine. There was a lot of reason to think this vaccine would be just as safe as other vaccines that are essential for protecting pregnant women and their newborn babies, like TDAP (which is recommended for all women in 3rd trimester).
There was not a lot of reason to suspect this would be any different. I won't say none. And some pregnant women were brave and went first for various reasons. We also always get inadvertent data of women not knowing they are pregnant being vaccinated while pregnant (I ended up being one of those women who got 2 shots not knowing). But the fact I was trying for a baby would not have changed anything so I knew there was a chance I would be vaccinated while pregnant anyway. So whether we mean to or not, there will be some data.
On the other hand, we also know just how specifically dangerous serious respiratory viruses are for pregnant women and their unborn babies.
I almost had to be hospitalized the first time I got sick with covid before the vaccine, when I wasn't pregnant, with its associated immunocompromise and limited lung capacity and all that. I was keenly aware of just how much my otherwise normal healthy lungs got knocked into the dirt almost incapable of keeping me ventilated without medical assistance.
But I'm not unique in experiencing the random chance of the extreme effect covid can have on the lungs.
Really grasping this, it's very, very difficult for me to understand how people feel safer taking their chances with this virus while pregnant, than with the vaccine.
I don't understand the scientific basis of the concern for the vaccine for fertility or fetuses.
When you're bleeding out, you need to be a lot more concerned about your BP and MAP and end organ perfusion, than the 1/1 million chance of HIV from a blood transfusion.
Everything in medicine comes down to weighing different likelihoods. I don't see how the vaccine is so dangerous, but maybe there's something we don't know yet. Whatever that may be, does not seem to me be the real immediate and likely danger *relative* to covid.
It's like a lion is in front of you salivating, and you're worried what might be hiding in the bushes if you run into them to hide.
There was not a lot of reason to suspect this would be any different. I won't say none. And some pregnant women were brave and went first for various reasons. We also always get inadvertent data of women not knowing they are pregnant being vaccinated while pregnant (I ended up being one of those women who got 2 shots not knowing). But the fact I was trying for a baby would not have changed anything so I knew there was a chance I would be vaccinated while pregnant anyway. So whether we mean to or not, there will be some data.
On the other hand, we also know just how specifically dangerous serious respiratory viruses are for pregnant women and their unborn babies.
I almost had to be hospitalized the first time I got sick with covid before the vaccine, when I wasn't pregnant, with its associated immunocompromise and limited lung capacity and all that. I was keenly aware of just how much my otherwise normal healthy lungs got knocked into the dirt almost incapable of keeping me ventilated without medical assistance.
But I'm not unique in experiencing the random chance of the extreme effect covid can have on the lungs.
Really grasping this, it's very, very difficult for me to understand how people feel safer taking their chances with this virus while pregnant, than with the vaccine.
I don't understand the scientific basis of the concern for the vaccine for fertility or fetuses.
When you're bleeding out, you need to be a lot more concerned about your BP and MAP and end organ perfusion, than the 1/1 million chance of HIV from a blood transfusion.
Everything in medicine comes down to weighing different likelihoods. I don't see how the vaccine is so dangerous, but maybe there's something we don't know yet. Whatever that may be, does not seem to me be the real immediate and likely danger *relative* to covid.
It's like a lion is in front of you salivating, and you're worried what might be hiding in the bushes if you run into them to hide.
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Dying from covid should be more the immediate concern than fertility, losing a pregnancy, or if it happens, likely rare and subtle effects on a fetus. (And I say this as someone with an immediate family member with severe nonverbal autism and also has lost a pregnancy).
That's the gamble, to be clear.
In the early days with less data, they didn't have a blanket recommendation for pregnant women. More data has been had, people have gambled, and it looks good. As I've been huffing and puffing just rolling over in bed, I'm very glad I protected my lungs from what I can only imagine would be serious compromise if a serious respiratory virus were added. Pregnant women don't have a lot of lung capacity to spare at some point.
My issue aren't the questions and concerns. It whatever is the rationale or logic being used as one weighs these things, and decides that the polio vaccine is scarier than polio, or the covid vax is scarier than covid for a pregnant woman at this point.
That's the gamble, to be clear.
In the early days with less data, they didn't have a blanket recommendation for pregnant women. More data has been had, people have gambled, and it looks good. As I've been huffing and puffing just rolling over in bed, I'm very glad I protected my lungs from what I can only imagine would be serious compromise if a serious respiratory virus were added. Pregnant women don't have a lot of lung capacity to spare at some point.
My issue aren't the questions and concerns. It whatever is the rationale or logic being used as one weighs these things, and decides that the polio vaccine is scarier than polio, or the covid vax is scarier than covid for a pregnant woman at this point.
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Clearly this is not a decision people are considering from a purely logic-based standpoint. It's a philosophical issue about whether we ought to coerce people to do something that we believe helps them and protects the public. So there are a lot of emotions at play which are amplified during pregnancy. For a lot of people, it feels safer to choose inaction which results in a more knowable risk, than action that results in a less clearly defined risk. There are also a lot of folks who just bristle at being told what to do.
Physicians are not immune to emotions and I'm not sure that doctors struggling with a personal issue in this way are incapable of operating in a more rational capacity when working with patients. This is why there are ethical guidelines around treating oneself and one's family.
That said, this thread is about the relative risks of staffing shortages, and hiring someone who colleagues will be uncomfortable working with. If do you believe this person would be exempted from the CMS mandate, my approach would be to bring this back to the staff and make sure that they would prefer to be understaffed than work with an unvaccinated colleague before making the decision to not hire this person. And I would also make sure with HR that making such a decision could not be construed as religious discrimination.
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There's good evidence for the vaccines reducing severe disease (which is why I am fully vaccinated including booster). Can anyone cite any evidence that the vaccine reduces transmission, particularly asymptomatic transmission? In other words, what is the evidence that the unvaccinated are dangerous to others, particularly the vaccinated?
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What is the vaccine effect on reducing transmission in the context of the SARS-CoV-2 delta variant?
COVID-19 vaccines that have obtained WHO emergency use listing appear to have high efficacy against severe disease and death, but lower efficacy against non-severe infections, and emerging evidence suggests that protection against non-severe disease declines faster following vaccination than...
www.thelancet.com
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Your post isn't taking into consideration the other person in the equation - the patient. Patients should have a right to be treated by vaccinated physicians only especially when they're at increased risk of Covid complications as those with mental illness are. If physicians refuse vaccination, then they should be excluded from hospital work. They can hang their shingle and see patients outpatient, but continuing to see admitted patients without being vaccinated should not be a thing.
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Right and it’s not like there isn’t precedence for this anyway. You’re already required to show proof of vaccination for a battery of other communicable diseases to work in most hospitals. This has been a thing since med school.
I had responses to a lot of you but it seems like moderators don't approve so I deleted them. For those who want to continue it further, PM me.
@Mass Effect
Share with me what you read about unvaccinated increasing risk for vaccinated.
@Mass Effect
Share with me what you read about unvaccinated increasing risk for vaccinated.
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Agreed that doctors should be vaccinated when possible, and in this instance there is a requirement to be vaccinated and the individual in question may be exempt. Additionally, patients in the hospital are likely to come into contact with other patients who are not vaccinated. It's a congregate setting and there is risk. I'm not sure how much the additional risk posed by a single unvaccinated doctor meaningfully increases that risk. And I would want to compare that risk against the risk of being treated by an overworked physician because of staffing issues. I wonder if all these questions would still be raised if we were talking about physician who could not be vaccinated for medical reasons.
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You're kidding right?
We know the vaccine isn't perfect. It decreases the risk of severe disease significantly but not down to 0%.
We know that being unvaccinated increases your risk of transmitting it to others due to: you're more likely to get it in the first place and you're infectious longer.
So if you have a group that is more likely to transmit it to other people around them, they are a risk to the vaccinated that is greater than a vaccinated person to other vaccinated people. Now the magnitude of that difference is certainly up for debate, but that there is a difference really shouldn't be.
From the article you linked:
"However, this study unfortunately also highlights that the vaccine effect on reducing transmission is minimal in the context of delta variant circulation."
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I mean…is it because they were full of vaccine conspiracy crap and misinformation? Cause you’ve got a pretty long response post up there that stayed up without an issue. So not sure what you’re complaining about.
Are you mad people come up with different conclusion than you?
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Lol so yes then
Lol. You are a caustic dude but it seems you're honest at the least. I still disagree with you.
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That was literally the first one that google brought up. There are more:
Vaccines reduce Covid transmission by 40%: WHO
Covid vaccines reduce transmission of the dominant Delta variant by about 40 percent, the WHO said Wednesday, warning that people were falling into a false sense of security concerning jabs.
Vaccinated people are less likely to spread Covid, new research finds
British scientists examined how the Pfizer-BioNTech and the AstraZeneca vaccines affected the spread of the virus if a person had a breakthrough infection.
www.nbcnews.com
Third doses of COVID-19 vaccines reduce infection and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and could prevent future surges in some populations
Background Vaccines have greatly reduced the impact of COVID-19 globally. Unfortunately, evidence indicates that immunity wanes following vaccination, especially with the Delta variant (B.1.617.2). Protection against severe disease and death remain high, but protection against milder disease and...
There are also articles and papers arguing the opposite.
1.
Vermont, the most vaccinated state in the nation, has been weathering a spike in COVID cases. But why? - The Boston Globe
The unexpected turn has triggered a sharp debate — at least by Vermont’s polite standards — over how forcefully to respond.
2.
3.
COVID-19 Vaccines May Not Prevent Nasal SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Asymptomatic Transmission - PubMed
Current COVID-19 vaccine candidates are administered by injection and designed to produce an IgG response, preventing viremia and the COVID-19 syndrome. However, systemic respiratory vaccines generally provide limited protection against viral replication and shedding within the airway, as this...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
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Looks like there's very limited evidence (but there is some), that the vaccine reduces transmission.... certainly not enough, in my opinion, to take away the rights of the unvaccinated
The odds of me giving a patient Hep B if unvaccinated are pretty damn low, but I don't remember anyone up in arms about needing that vaccination to work in medicine.
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I recently got privileges and a 1099 position at a psychiatric facility... they only asked me about flu and covid vaccines (and there has always been the option to wear a mask instead of getting the flu vaccine). No one has asked me about hep b vaccine recently.
I do always get my flu shot
I do always get my flu shot
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Really? I've now worked for 5 hospital systems if we include residency. All demanded titers for Hep B and MMR and if negative I would be expected to get those vaccines.
Also yearly PPDs.
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Re: CS Lewis. He was awfully close to enlightenment—if only he had included the right to an open future and maximum possible autonomy to those he feared being lumped in with.
Have you all followed the Gundry abstract in Circulation (AHA journal) controversy?
Taken at face value, the vaccines obviously had some effect. Whether the biomarkers are good measures, I don't know. Whether the biomarkers rise for other inflammatory events, I don't know. Whether they rise for an actual COVID infection, I don't know. How long do they rise for, I don't know.
What is confusing is that the abstract was published for a presentation that took place on November 13. So obviously the ideas were expounded upon. In trying to find articles on what was said (since there is no paper) I came across this one by an MD himself who basically says "Shut up and stop listening to that doctor—look away—you're too stupid to understand anything—but also listen to other authorities":
www.forbes.com
I just thought it was so obnoxiously written and not going to convince anyone who is skeptical. Obfuscating situations because you don't trust people led to a loss of trust early on in the pandemic.
If I were a journalist, instead of having a tantrum in that article, I'd be trying to track down that presentation (which I actually have been trying to do).
Have you all followed the Gundry abstract in Circulation (AHA journal) controversy?
Taken at face value, the vaccines obviously had some effect. Whether the biomarkers are good measures, I don't know. Whether the biomarkers rise for other inflammatory events, I don't know. Whether they rise for an actual COVID infection, I don't know. How long do they rise for, I don't know.
What is confusing is that the abstract was published for a presentation that took place on November 13. So obviously the ideas were expounded upon. In trying to find articles on what was said (since there is no paper) I came across this one by an MD himself who basically says "Shut up and stop listening to that doctor—look away—you're too stupid to understand anything—but also listen to other authorities":
New Covid-19 Vaccine, Myocarditis Claims From Questionable Abstract In American Heart Association Journal
Twitter has added a warning to anyone clicking on the link to this abstract.
www.forbes.com
I just thought it was so obnoxiously written and not going to convince anyone who is skeptical. Obfuscating situations because you don't trust people led to a loss of trust early on in the pandemic.
If I were a journalist, instead of having a tantrum in that article, I'd be trying to track down that presentation (which I actually have been trying to do).
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I got a TDaP booster along with my COVID-19 booster in September. I thought at the time that it's interesting that no one says "My body, my choice" about the TDaP vaccine. I was, like many of you, uncertain about the mRNA vaccine initially a year ago, but millions of doses later (billions perhaps worldwide?) it appears to be just as safe as any other of our routine and trusted vaccines. Overall, research has been bearing this out. This is no thalidomide.
Objections of healthy people to the vaccines at this point are mainly from the overly political, the ignorant, or the fearful. I have very little respect personally for those three traits and believe it reveals a lack of character in a physician. I wouldn't hire anyone with such a deficiencies because I wouldn't want to work with them, either. I wouldn't even apply anywhere that isn't mandating the COVID-19 vaccine as it reveals a lack of care for patients and employees.
Anyone who doesn't like vaccines can go home, and try private practice. Unless state medical boards decide being vaccinated is part of the standard of professionalism and duty to care, which they should if they have any fortitude and desire to actually protect patients as much as possible.
Objections of healthy people to the vaccines at this point are mainly from the overly political, the ignorant, or the fearful. I have very little respect personally for those three traits and believe it reveals a lack of character in a physician. I wouldn't hire anyone with such a deficiencies because I wouldn't want to work with them, either. I wouldn't even apply anywhere that isn't mandating the COVID-19 vaccine as it reveals a lack of care for patients and employees.
Anyone who doesn't like vaccines can go home, and try private practice. Unless state medical boards decide being vaccinated is part of the standard of professionalism and duty to care, which they should if they have any fortitude and desire to actually protect patients as much as possible.
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1. Interesting on several levels. So first, during the worst of the Florida surge they were looking at a rate of 114 cases per 100,000 people. Vermont at the moment is sitting on 90 cases per 100,000. Meaning Florida was right at 25% more cases per 100k. Vermont could still go up since this might not be the worst of their Delta surge yet. Time will tell though. Going past that, Florida was at roughly a 60% vaccination rate at that time. Vermont is currently at 73% vaccinated. In terms of vaccination, that's not a huge difference especially when you consider that for the vast majority of our vaccines you need to hit close to 90% to approach herd immunity. Beyond even that, this site has a neat little graphic: Vermont ends November with record-breaking streak of severe Covid-19 outcomesThere are also articles and papers arguing the opposite.
1.Vermont, the most vaccinated state in the nation, has been weathering a spike in COVID cases. But why? - The Boston Globe
The unexpected turn has triggered a sharp debate — at least by Vermont’s polite standards — over how forcefully to respond.www.bostonglobe.com
2.
3.COVID-19 Vaccines May Not Prevent Nasal SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Asymptomatic Transmission - PubMed
Current COVID-19 vaccine candidates are administered by injection and designed to produce an IgG response, preventing viremia and the COVID-19 syndrome. However, systemic respiratory vaccines generally provide limited protection against viral replication and shedding within the airway, as this...
Infection rate (per 100k) | |||
| Vaccinated | Unvaccinated | ||
| Two weeks ending Nov. 17 | 373 | 1491 | 4x higher for unvaccinated people |
| Two weeks ending Dec. 1 | 370 | 1625 | 4.4x |
| Delta wave to date (July 1 - Dec. 1) | 1982 | 8600 | 4.3x |
2. That study fails to take into account that many countries aren't testing as much or being truthful. For example, no one actually believes the numbers China is publicly releasing. It also seems likely to countries with minimal vaccination aren't likely to be testing as much. There's no way that the authors conclusion of "In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people." is true.
3. This was a paper from February 2021 before vaccines had gotten to significant numbers of people and is a basic science study (COVID can be found in nasal passages of vaccinated people) but without real world infection data.
