Plan B Forum

My moral/ethical values are really challenged by the situation in contemporary USofA. The vaccine has been available free to everyone above 18 for about a year now. Yet we still have hundreds (thousands?) of new cases in the hospitals every week. In China, where this all started (so we had advance notice it was coming) there are actual, real-world numbers of new cases of less than a hundred in the same time period. They REALLY lockdown entire cities when there is a handful of reported positive tests. I think an adult who choses not to get the covid shot (except in very limited medical conditions) is more foolish than the person who rides a nice Kawasaki down the road at 110mph with no helmet and barefooted and wearing jeans and a t-shirt.
The 600.000+ dead are a monument to American individual selfishness.

Here, the caretakers in the ICU units are working way past burn out. And they know the person in that bed is a damn fool if they are more than 18 years old and did not get vaccinated. I find myself wishing the 'shot card' was mandatory before admission of adults to a hospital for any kind of treatment.

I remember a conversation about 20 years ago with a friend who was one of the 100 richest persons in Delaware. He was decrying that his tax money was used to support and keep alive people who seemed unable to do more than make bad or foolish decisions about their own life. We were sitting in a coffee shop on Main Street in Newark, Delaware. I asked him if he could tolerate something like the places in major cities of India were there were dead bodies on the sidewalk every day. He said, "I would politely step over them and come in and get my coffee." I was appalled. Now, I am not so sure.

snailgate

You’re mistaken - the vaccine has only been available to everyone over 18 since around May of this year. I realize the pandemic has altered our conception of time but . . . still, there is no reason as of end of August that everyone eligible hasn’t been vaccinated, there has been more than enough supply and opportunity over the last 4 months that we should be going into the school year and fall/winter with 85-90% vaccination, if all Americans were true patriots.

It seems like everyday the news dredges up some poor SOB in the hospital wishing they had gotten the vaccine.

You got me BSG. I just looked at my card and it is for Jan, 2021. As a Geezer. Essentials could get it in December, or Maybe November. Our first lockdown here in Delaware was the first week end in March 2020

But I still look at no-vaccine as a form of Russian Roulette, with a machine gun that is gonna hit other people.

snailgate

True, May 1 was Biden's plan, but it was pretty broadly available, at least to adults, before then. I got my first shto in late February, and there were large vaccine centers in every county opened in January. It may not have been the same in every state, but it was in a lot of them.

Most states had restrictions on who was eligible to get the shots until at least April - we certainty did here in Massachusetts.

In any case while we have an overall decent rate of vaccination statewide, on a local level it’s a bit more disheartening. My own community is full of QAnon idiots and our overall vaccination rate is only 54%, so I am back on restrictions, shopping only in the early hours or right before closing and masking up - N95s this time, given all the newest evidence from contact tracing and other studies on the virulence and lethality of the delta variant.

A recent study out of Oz indicates that people can catch the delta variant merely from walking by an infected person - it’s no longer required to interact with someone ~15 minutes. Newest evidence also establishes that delta is indeed making people much sicker due to much higher viral loads. I am honestly dreading the next few months as I don’t believe we are going to change the minds of most of these antivaxxers/antimaskers and delta is ripping through them like dry cordwood. I keep reading more and more stories about folks dying of other treatable/curable ailments because they can’t get hospital beds now with the overflowing ICUs. It’s all just maddening.

I just read an article in NYT about a 30 year old Texas antivaxxer antimasker covid denier who is on hospice from a covid19 infection that went very very bad. He is leaving a pregnant wife and three very young children behind. This is one of many stories I have read recently of vaccine refuseniks who have orphaned multiple children. Not to get ugly, but all those Republicunts at the start of the pandemic who said the mostly elderly victims were near their time anyway and their deaths would relieve strain on the social security system and Medicaid/Medicare - wonder if they are grasping that we are going to be paying SS dependent benefits to all these orphans and covering their healthcare needs via Medicaid for years to come after this pandemic burns out. I’m quite sure they don’t all have relatives in a position to pick up the slack and one doesn’t often hear of SS survivor benefits being refused in any case.

It’s all just senseless.

BSG, the sad truth is that nearly all the anti-vaxers in Texas (and my famly in Missouri) know the NYTimes is all liberal lies.

snailgate