Getting vaccinated

[Gob]

And that is not the same as being exposed daily to life threatening viruses.

And nobody likes lawyers in any case....

[Guinevere]

And that is not the same as being exposed daily to life threatening viruses.

And nobody likes lawyers in any case....

Depends on the lawyer….

MG, hope the granddaughter recovers quickly. The ongoing politicalization of a serious public health issue is so infuriating. Wear your mask regardless of mandate, and stay safe. Mine is back on and I’m avoiding indoor crowds. Again, and even though we have an 80% vaccination rate in Massachusetts. I’ve been back in the office almost every day of the week, and I think I’m going to be returning to my home office.

[Big RR]

I agree; everyone likes their lawyer; it's just those others...

[Sue U]

I like both of you, and Long Run as well. So there.

[Gob]

Children born during the coronavirus pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor and overall cognitive performance compared with children born before, a US study suggests.

The first few years of a child’s life are critical to their cognitive development. But with Covid-19 triggering the closure of businesses, nurseries, schools and playgrounds, life for infants changed considerably, with parents stressed and stretched as they tried to balance work and childcare.


With limited stimulation at home and less interaction with the world outside, pandemic-era children appear to have scored shockingly low on tests designed to assess cognitive development, said lead study author Sean Deoni, associate professor of paediatrics (research) at Brown University.

In the decade preceding the pandemic, the mean IQ score on standardised tests for children aged between three months and three years of age hovered around 100, but for children born during the pandemic that number tumbled to 78, according to the analysis, which is yet to be peer-reviewed.

“It’s not subtle by any stretch,” said Deoni. “You don’t typically see things like that, outside of major cognitive disorders.”

The study included 672 children from the state of Rhode Island. Of these, 188 were born after July 2020 and 308 were born prior to January 2019, while 176 were born between January 2019 and March 2020. The children included in the study were born full-term, had no developmental disabilities and were mostly white.

Those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds fared worse in the tests, the researchers found.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... tudy-finds

[BoSoxGal]

That is not at all shocking to me; very sad quite obviously, but not at all shocking.

For whatever reason lots of new mothers don’t interact with their babies beyond feeding changing washing shushing. Maybe they never learned anything at all about child development/psychology (one of the core practical courses of a universal high school curriculum in my imagined socialist nirvana) either from their formal education or from baby books, maybe they are just shit parents. Those babies rely on the interactions from other children and adults in the world, and from listening to the verbal interactions of older children and adults, to begin to develop language and intellectual capacity.

Stuck at home with a limited number of adults who quite likely were glued to social media and screens, also likely to be suffering some degree of mental health challenge as did many tens of millions in the pandemic, these babies were little eating pooping sleeping lumps in cribs and bouncy seats. (edit: also likely exposed to much more and worse domestic violence, a factor already proven to impact intellectual development in babies and children as trauma causes actual visible harm to the brain, see recent neuro research and functional MRIs of patients of all ages with PTSD.)

There’s an amazing amount of plasticity in the young human brain, so hopefully a lot of room for these kiddos to catch up quickly as the world becomes more normal again.

This study is great evidence, if we needed anymore, of the value to all society of offering subsidized high quality daycare centers where well educated child development professionals could give all babies and toddlers some part of a great start on the learning path. These centers should also offer free and readily accessible ‘mommy/daddy & me’ classes to teach new parents how to stimulate baby’s developing brain so even SAHMs/SAHDs could learn what babies are capable of and why they need more than just nurture of basic needs.

[Gob]

Common myths about Covid – debunked; Read on for the facts about Sars-CoV-2, backed up by science

[ex-khobar Andy]

From the study cited by Gob about child development and its apparent decline in babies born during COVID (halfway down page 12):

One aspect also not investigated here is the impact of mask-wearing by the study staff during child visits and assessments [53]. The inability of infants to see full facial expressions may have eliminated non-verbal cues, muffled instructions, or otherwise altered the understanding of the test questions and instructions.

Ooh, I can drive a truck through that one.

I don't doubt that, for various reasons including reduced socialization, kids' development has slowed. But by 22%? We all know people with IQ around 100 - after all that's the general mean across a population. 78 (and yes, I know, IQ was not the only measurement here) is pretty low. I suspect that mask wearing may have contributed to that finding; and at the very least it should have been controlled for. I am certain that the average level of covid-induced social isolation is well within the normal range for non-covid years: some kids are isolated by geography, social custom, parental choice and other factors. It should not be difficult to find study participants from that cohort although I suspect (don't know) that they were to some extent self selected - parents volunteered their children for the study) - which might imply a higher than average level of socialization among the control (pre-covid) group.

[MGMcAnick]

My granddaughter's symptoms are all but gone. A little runny nose, and that's it. She will stay out of school for a bit, but that's all.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Excellent news

[Burning Petard]

Thanks MgMc, for keeping us informed.

snailgate

[BoSoxGal]

I dropped into my neighborhood CVS yesterday, first time in a month or so. They’ve removed a large area of shelving in the grocery part of the store and replaced it with two changing room style rooms for ‘vaccination stations’. This seemed a little weird to me, because we are at almost 80% vaccination here in Massachusetts, so it seems like an odd time to be ramping up for vaccinations - unless they are thinking of boosters and flu shots, or maybe annual covid19 vaccinations should that be the next step.

Looking at the most recent data on vaccine resiliency in the face of the delta variant, I have been mulling whether to go get a booster or even a two dose course of the Moderna - it has a very high resiliency to delta, whereas Pfizer’s is much lower.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.c ... fizer.html

So many vaccines are sitting out there unused and they aren’t getting sent to the folks in other countries who want them desperately, so why not have another? Should I feel guilty if I do this?

Article about the benefits of mix and match with vaccines: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01359-3

[Gob]

My granddaughter's symptoms are all but gone. A little runny nose, and that's it. She will stay out of school for a bit, but that's all.

Nice to get good news for a change.

[Gob]

[Bicycle Bill]

-"BB"-

[Gob]

A frontline nurse has shared her heartbreak over losing a 14-year-old patient who died of COVID-19 after her anti-vaxxer parents forbid doctors from intubating her.

Twitter user @Jessicam6946, who is a nurse practitioner in the intensive care unit, revealed in a recent thread that they had four patients die of COVID in one shift, saying each of their deaths could have been prevented if they had been vaccinated.

'Tonight I helplessly held the hand of and stroked the hair of a beautiful 14-year-old girl as she exited this world. She was looking forward to starting high school and eventually becoming a veterinarian. It was so senseless!' she tweeted on Saturday.

'I truly believe she could have been saved if her parents had not forbidden us from intubating her. A free vaccination would have prevented it all! This little girl was robbed of her whole life and of fulfilling all of her dreams.'

Jessica said the girl had been with them for nine days and had been able to communicate with the hospital staff until she took a 'turn for the worse' the day before.

'About two hours later we were unable to save a 25-year-old mother of one who was 15 weeks pregnant,' the nurse continued. 'She had refused the vaccines because of the lies about them causing infertility and harming her baby.

'Liars killed her, her baby, and robbed a two-year-old little boy of his mommy and sibling. Not to mention robbing a husband of his wife and child.'

Jessica said those were just two of the four deaths they had that night, noting the oldest person was only 45 years old.

'It was the first time since late March we have lost more than three COVID patients in a single shift,' she added. 'Then we find out this morning a coworker had two of her tires cut in one of our employee parking lots overnight!

Compare and contrast...

Groups of anti-vaxxers blasted the San Diego County Board of Supervisors at a meeting on Tuesday, branding them 'Nazis' for debating mask and vaccine mandates.

Several anti-vaccination groups attended the meeting, including ReOpen San Diego, Let Them Breathe, and San Diego Rise Up.

The angry demonstrators insisted that government mandates were 'psychological warfare', 'opening the pits of Hell', and violated 'international human rights law.'


At least 120 people spoke during the meeting on the county's effort to handle the pandemic. The meeting was streamed online and lasted 4 and a half hours.

The meeting was held on the same day that San Diego County announced that they will begin collecting vaccination verification from its 18,000 employees. Those who are not vaccinated will be subjected to weekly testing and required to wear mask while indoors.

The county is also suggesting that local business owners in private, public, and nonprofit sectors require their employees to follow these same precautions.

Matt Baker stepped up to the microphone at the local meeting and began whistling calling upon 'the wind of time.'

He said: 'That's the wind. That's the wind of time. That's the wind of history. That's the wind blowing through your ancestors' bones begging you to do the right thing. That is the wind that Matt Baker is calling upon from Ocean Beach.'

'The wind that is blowing through the Black people, through the white people, through the Chinese people, through the Mexican Americans to the people that built this building with their bare hands to raise up this nation.'

His intensity increased as he raised his voice, 'You are about to open a pit of hell. You do not get a vaccine passport put on us. You know as the population who's in control, you know as politicians—once you get a power, you never relinquish it.'

Accusing the local government authorities of being Nazis he continued to shout, 'Your children and your children's children will be subjugated! They will be asked, 'How many vaccines have you had? Have you been a good little Nazi? Heil Fauci! Heil Fauci! Heil Fauci!'

[BoSoxGal]

‘Make sure my kids get vaccinated’: Anti-vaxx mother dies of Covid two weeks after husband

Lydia Rodriguez’s cousin, a nurse, tried to urge her family members to get jab, but to no avail

“Please make sure my kids get vaccinated.”

Those were some of the last words of Lydia Rodriguez, a mother of four in Texas, who died of Covid on Monday after deciding not to get the vaccine. Two weeks earlier, her husband, Lawrence, died of Covid in the same hospital, having finally requested a vaccine right before being put on a ventilator.

“Lydia has never really believed in vaccines,” Dottie Jones, Lydia’s cousin and a neonatal nurse, told The Washington Post. “She believed that she could handle everything on her own, that you didn’t really need medicine.”

In early July, each member of the Galveston, Texas, family tested positive for coronavirus, after Lydia and the children returned from a church camp. The kids, three of whom were old enough to qualify for vaccines but didn’t get one, all had mild or asymptomatic cases, but Lydia, a piano teacher, and her husband soon hospitalised.

Ms Jones, who as a nurse has had a front-row view in recent days as Texas once again becomes a Covid hot spot, tried to warn her cousin about what she was seeing.

“I knew she would never get vaccinated,” Ms Jones told The Post. “I was very concerned.”

Lydia died two days before her 43rd birthday.

Now, the fate of the Rodriguez family’s 18-year-old twins, 16-year-old son, and 11-year-old daughter are up to the courts. Family members have set up an online fundraiser to support the children, who are expected to get vaccines soon.

The family’s tragic story echoes reports from ICUs around the country, where unvaccinated people, the vast majority of current Covid cases, continue dying in large numbers. Some who previously expressed hesitancy have come around to the free and effective vaccine, while others, including, alarmingly, some health care workers, have remained resistant.

The state of Texas is emerging as one of the national Covid hotspots amid the now dominant Delta variant, with a positivity rate at nearly 20 per cent.

Texas governor Greg Abbott has fought local officials and banned schools from implementing mask and vaccine requirements, even though he’s also requested mortuary trailers from the federal government and come down with Covid himself in recent days.

“Going forward, in Texas, there will not be any government-imposed shutdowns or mask mandates,” Mr Abbott said earlier this month. “Everyone already knows what to do.”

Those poor orphaned kids. I am so fucking angry at the unvaccinated! I am fresh out of any kind of sympathy for these selfish fuckers.

[Joe Guy]

I just heard a recording on the radio of a woman at meeting somewhere - it might even have been the same meeting that Gob referenced - and the woman said that our children are being deprived of fresh air by being forced to wear masks and that if God had meant us to wear masks, "he would have made our faces different".

[BoSoxGal]

[Bicycle Bill]

Not if you eat them raw.
Otherwise, the heat of cooking them to a proper temperature denatures the RNA in the vaccine, rendering it useless.

-"BB"-