2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic (Vaccination 2021 Edition)

[Bedinsis]

Is there any actual reason (besides capitalism I mean) to not just use the same formula or whatever for all vaccines? Something like an open source vaccine I guess.

In addition to the previous points, you might have noticed that the virus is evolving through mutations. I've heard the news mention a British mutation, a Brazilian mutation and a South African mutation. If it would turn out that the one formula was highly inefficient against one or more of the mutations then we would be back on square one with a widespread disease without an effective vaccine. As it is now, there are multiple options so hopefully all the mutations will have some vaccine that is effective against it.

 

[Agema]

Is there any actual reason (besides capitalism I mean) to not just use the same formula or whatever for all vaccines? Something like an open source vaccine I guess.

I think this was the idea that the WHO wanted - a massive, collective global effort and common resource. Obviously, capitalism and nationalism intervened.

AstraZeneca's vaccine is being sold at cost (at least for the first 12 months or something) - the scientists at Oxford who had the core idea made that a condition, although AZ obviously benefit from goodwill even if not profits. After that, pretty much everyone else is trying to secure their markets for money and bragging rights.

Having options is a good thing. Having different manufacturing costs, storage requirements, distribution methods, etc allows for different solutions to be enacted where and when they are better suited. Like, if everyone was copying the vaccine that needs ultra-cold storage, we'd be having even bigger distribution problems. And god forbid one of these vaccines causes unforeseen issues way down the line, it's better not to have all your eggs in one basket.

The idea was never that there would be one vaccine that the whole world's minds developed - instead that there would be collective "bank" of ideas that everyone would put into and could draw out of instead of finding avenues blocked by IP. One could compare perhaps to the Human Genome Project. That created a vast amount of data that has been highly valuable and generated creativity, but would almost certainly never have happened if left to businesses: it is estimated that spurred economic gains over 100 times the cost. An element here is the basic idea that whilst IP spurs creation by encouraging creator profit, it also retards creation by preventing far more other creators and developers access to ideas for substantial periods of time.

 

[Fieldy409]

The vaccines themselves are different: there are mRNA (Pfizer, Moderna), human adenovirus vector (Sputnik), chimp adenovirus vector (AstraZeneca), inactivated virus (Chinese CoronaVac). Another thing is that making a vaccine or a drug can sometimes be easier than the testing phases by many orders of magnitude. And also while anticapitalist sentiments have been on the rise lately, these vaccines -- some of them extremely good -- have been created efficiently, safely, and quickly. The combination of strict testing requirements on top of the profit incentive has worked well.

But only when the world suddenly had a huge demand for it did they manage to bang out all these vaccines for a corona virus in a year. If our research on corona virus vaccines wasn't profit driven maybe we could have put this much effort into making them before we needed them and had the research done before the pandemic even started instead of waiting a whole year....

 

[Phoenixmgs]

But only when the world suddenly had a huge demand for it did they manage to bang out all these vaccines for a corona virus in a year. If our research on corona virus vaccines wasn't profit driven maybe we could have put this much effort into making them before we needed them and had the research done before the pandemic even started instead of waiting a whole year....

Exactly this, Dr. Peter Hotez's team made a coronavirus vaccine for SARS that was sitting in a lab for years because they didn't have funding to do trials because nobody cared about SARS anymore. And guess what? SARS confers immunity to covid.

 

[Fieldy409]

Exactly this, Dr. Peter Hotez's team made a coronavirus vaccine for SARS that was sitting in a lab for years because they didn't have funding to do trials because nobody cared about SARS anymore. And guess what? SARS confers immunity to covid.

Not to mention I think a lot of animals die from corona viruses in agriculture and pets. I half remember reading something about that.

 

[McElroy]

But only when the world suddenly had a huge demand for it did they manage to bang out all these vaccines for a corona virus in a year. If our research on corona virus vaccines wasn't profit driven maybe we could have put this much effort into making them before we needed them and had the research done before the pandemic even started instead of waiting a whole year....

As I already mentioned, the vaccines themselves were relatively easy to create and the testing would have to be done anyway. Vaccine research is ongoing all over the world. Focusing on existing diseases is the best effort.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

As I already mentioned, the vaccines themselves were relatively easy to create and the testing would have to be done anyway. Vaccine research is ongoing all over the world. Focusing on existing diseases is the best effort.

"We could have had this ready to go and been testing the vaccine's efficacy at the start of this new outbreak in China," said Hotez, who believes the vaccine could provide cross-protection against the new coronavirus, which causes a respiratory disease known as COVID-19. "There is a problem with the ecosystem in vaccine development, and we've got to fix this."

 

[stroopwafel]

There are almost no flu deaths this season but I don't understand why it wasn't a problem for grandpa to die of flu but when it's covid there must be a year long house arrest for everybody. Not to mention so many people losing their job or small business or the inflation risk of governments going into astronomical debt. After a year they should be able to assess the life years won versus the life years lost due to lockdowns and delayed care. It's like the world begins and ends with covid when it's only a benign respiratory infection for 98% of the population. They keep repeating that same mantra of save the hospitals but is it really necessary to put a walking heart attack or grave dodger on a ventilator for weeks on end while the cancer treatment of a 25-year old with maybe one night in an ICU stay gets delayed? It''s like every sense of proportion is lost here. Give something against the difficult breathing and let them just go in peace.

If it's not a covid infection it's something else. Like the flu which mortality rate has seen a sharp decline in numbers. The only real winner here is Big Pharma who will make record profits with the annual vaccination circus. The causes of novel viruses also remain unaddressed; illegal trade in native animals, wet markets, climate change, overpopulation etc so it's just waiting for the next one.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

There are almost no flu deaths this season but I don't understand why it wasn't a problem for grandpa to die of flu but when it's covid there must be a year long house arrest for everybody. Not to mention so many people losing their job or small business or the inflation risk of governments going into astronomical debt. After a year they should be able to assess the life years won versus the life years lost due to lockdowns and delayed care. It's like the world begins and ends with covid when it's only a benign respiratory infection for 98% of the population. They keep repeating that same mantra of save the hospitals but is it really necessary to put a walking heart attack or grave dodger on a ventilator for weeks on end while the cancer treatment of a 25-year old with maybe one night in an ICU stay gets delayed? It''s like every sense of proportion is lost here. Give something against the difficult breathing and let them just go in peace.

If it's not a covid infection it's something else. Like the flu which mortality rate has seen a sharp decline in numbers. The only real winner here is Big Pharma who will make record profits with the annual vaccination circus. The causes of novel viruses also remain unaddressed; illegal trade in native animals, wet markets, climate change, overpopulation etc so it's just waiting for the next one.

So much this. We know there's better ways to "live with covid" but we aren't doing it like say treating people early instead telling them to stay home and go to hospital when it gets bad, that's not good treatment, that's shit treatment. Then, you caused millions to lose jobs and health insurance meaning they're more liking to just chance it suffering at home because they know they can't afford the hospital. And they can't even go to a clinic because the clinic sends everyone to the hospital if they just have a headache. Covid isn't ebola where a clinic can't treat a rather weak respiratory disease.

 

[stroopwafel]

So much this. We know there's better ways to "live with covid" but we aren't doing it like say treating people early instead telling them to stay home and go to hospital when it gets bad, that's not good treatment, that's shit treatment. Then, you caused millions to lose jobs and health insurance meaning they're more liking to just chance it suffering at home because they know they can't afford the hospital. And the can't even go to a clinic because the clinic sends everyone to the hospital if they just have a headache. Covid isn't ebola where a clinic can't treat a rather weak respiratory disease.

The other day I spoke to someone who was so stressed by covid, lockdowns and the fear mongering in the media that he smoked a pack a day and visibly gained more than a few pounds. Just one example of how an overreaction to a virus the vast majority of people aren't at risk for causes panic that is actually way worse than the threat itself.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[stroopwafel]

As someone pointed out earlier in this thread: Now, barely a year after the Corona virus made it into the US, it has killed more US citizens then lost their lives in WW2. The healthcare systems of pretty much every western nation has been strained to near breaking point. In some cases like New York and London it arguably broke down temporarily when patients either had to be discharged early (with ongoing Covid infections) because the hospitals desperately needed thousands of hospital beds or had ambulances queuing for hours outside of ERs (while the patients in them had serious Covid infections) because the hospitals could not cope with the massive influx. In several places in Northern Italy the healthcare system was so overloaded in early 2020 that retired GPs resorted to making house calls to seriously ill Covid patients because that was the only way these people were going to get medical attention and they had to outsource the storage of dead bodies to restaurants because the morgues couldn't handle the massive spike in deaths.

In Sweden the number of sick leave hours for registered nurses rose by 28,31% in 2020 compared to 2019 and we are now seeing staggering numbers of RNs on long time sick leave due to exhaustion and frighteningly high numbers of RNs and Doctors leaving healthcare altogether. The Chief Resident of the ICU where I live has gone on record saying that your average Covid-19 case in an ICU is roughly eight times more care intensive then your average ICU patient and there's simply no way to get eight times the staff, on top of the fact that there have been more patients admitted to the ICU then your average year.

That WW2 comparison makes no sense at all. These were men in the prime of their life while the average covid death is about the same as the average age of death. Covid is a benign respiratory infection for 98% of the population and the only reason hospitals get overwhelmed(though it also appear to depend on location) is that every ambulance is required to drive people to the hospital no matter how old, how sick or in what poor health to begin with. They could also give them something against the shortness of breath and a sedative at home. I wonder how many of those people who were put on a ventilator won't be dead a year later anyway. Most people hardly even recover from it espescially after a certain age. In every age people accepted that there was an end to life so I don't know why if you don't get to become a century old it is suddenly considered a tragedy. Obesity is much the same. There are many fat people but not many old fat people. If it's not covid it's something else that will do them in. It's no surprise for example that a country like Vietnam has the lowest amount of covid deaths.

I am trying not to get upset here, so I'll just humbly suggest that you don't make up shitty strawmen like this when you don't understand either the medical triage system or how physician's have been forced to prioritize during the pandemic. If there is someone who doesn't have a sense of proportion about this, it is people like you who doesn't understand just how much stress the health care system and all of its staff has been under. People who don't understand that in most countries the saving grace for the health care system has been committed and altruistic professionals who've given all they've got, for many of them far past their own breaking point, to ensure that people who need medical attention gets it.

And people like you have the nerve to suggest that we should just let the virus roar, put even more pressure on the people who struggle daily to cope with the demand and stress of pandemic health care, and that all it takes is for physicians to make some tougher calls. As if physicians haven't been doing that for a year, as if "letting them just go in peace" isn't something practiced daily and still requires a lot of work and dedication from nursing staff (because what exactly do you think happens with the body after someone passes? It will be treated with the respect a deceased human being deserves and a senior nurse will be on hand to console next of kin, even if by phone in these times). Yeah, you don't get to talk proportions because you obviously don't understand exactly how apt wartime comparisons are for the heroic professionals who treat Covid-19 daily.

I've read enough interviews with medical specialists who are sick of delaying urgent care like a cancer treatment of their patient who still have their whole life in front of them because they don't have place for one night of ICU care because it's full of elderly and middle aged fat blokes with a laundry list of comorbidities who are on ventilators for weeks on end. Italy in particular they will put someone of 90 on a ventilator and call it a tragedy when he/she dies. Most of it just have to do that we no longer accept death as just a natural conclusion to life. At one point people might want to become a thousand years old but it's just not realistic.

What if in any of the years to follow there will be another novel virus are they going to repeat this entire circus and give people another years long house arrest? The problems of climate change, overpopulation, depleted resources and as such zoonotic diseases will only increase. Societies won't even have the financial means anymore because they will all have worthless currency. In that light you can also consider who will suffer the most from the inevitable budget cuts in healthcare. Never have so much been sacrificed for so little.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[stroopwafel]

The comparison is relevant because the mortality rate during WW2 was extremely elevated. Even when adjusted for population increases you've got almost twice the morality rate in 2020.

What does total numbers matter when the vast majority of 'covid deaths' is of old age? In a period of five years the mortality rate of the last year might not even stand out because it's compensated by less deaths in the following years. Something that also happened last summer after the initial wave. How much should be sacrificed just to delay the inevatible by a few years at most? That entire philosophy is what makes healthcare so unaffordable. More expensive and life saving treatments are available every passing year but at one point you can question if it's even desirable to protract a life by one month with a 100k treatment. How is treatment that wasn't even available 75 years ago for people whose life is coming to a natural end even remotely similar to a generation of healthy young men sacrificed on a battlefield? It's just a stupid comparison that makes no sense.

First off: No.
Second: It is almost as if the law requires public healthcare systems to provide medical treatment for everyone. Similarly, people with a healthcare insurance are entitled to healthcare based on the fact that they are paying for the service of receiving healthcare. The bare minimum is that an actual doctor makes an assessment of health and necessity of treatment, because EMTs or ambulance nurses (depending on country) are not qualified to do that beyond a triage of immediate healthcare needs. So yeah, any and all ambulances need to go to the ER because that's where the doctors are, anything else would be akin to letting people die in the streets.

Entitled to medical care I agree but no one is entitled to become a 100 years old. If someone is very old or in very poor health on top of a covid infection than an ambulance nurse is more than able to determine if it serves any purpose to drag their ass to a hospital. If that doesn't suffice you can also just ask them if they want to stay at home and be provided comfort or receive medical care at all costs. Most covid patients aren't exactly unfamiliar with the medical circus. We live in an era where old people tattoo ''do not rescuscitate'' on their chest because doctors do not know when to stop so many people might even prefer to maintain autonomy over their own lives instead of doctors and nurses in some creepy hospital. Imagine having to spend your last moments there.

This was done in Sweden. There was a public outrage during the autumn when it came to light that a lot of residents in nursing homes had been put on palliative treatments with large opiate doses (something that invariably killed them when respiratory problems met respiratory suppression). Especially when it turned out that several residents survived because their next of kin refused to allow that treatment. Would you be ok with what is essentially state mandated euthanasia for your grandparents? Your parents? Yourself? All because some dude somewhere decided, without meeting you and assessing your health, that you "probably" wouldn't survive anyway.

I hope I'd be long dead before being admitted to a nursing home so I don't understand the fixation with a painfully long life anyway. Why must life last a really long time without it being worth living? Without medical intervention many people's life would have already come to a close without reaching old age which is what I hope would happen to me.

I assume those elderly were given opiates because they complained they were in a lot of pain. Must their suffering endure because their children who visit once a month want to preserve their (grand)parents as a relic? What else should that nursing home have done? Have those elderly admitted to an ICU and then back into the nursing home? It just becomes inhumane and cruel at this point.

None or next to it. Let me be plain, because this discussion is ridiculous since you know nothing of how healthcare actually works: Being put in a ventilator is extremely taxing on the patient. A machine is literally forcing air into and out of your lungs constantly while you are sedated. All your nutrition will come from IV-drips and within a few days muscle atrophy sets in as you are not moving at all and this atrophy includes muscles like those normally used for active breathing. If you survive this shock to your system, you then need to be woken up from sedation. That first requires you to go off the ventilator, with muscles that have lost much of the strength they need to compress your lungs. The actual waking itself is also fraught with peril as spikes in blood pressure and heart rate are common (as are the opposite of vasodepression and bradycardia). Once you are awake you're going to endure weeks of hellish physiotherapy to reach even the minimum level required for activities of daily life, let alone the function of an average human.
TLDR: Ventilator treatment is reserved for relatively healthy people who's bodies can endure the stress of the treatment and following weakened state. Elderly elderly and previously ill patients will not be considered.

I know ventilator treatment is an assault to the system that's why I said many probably won't live that long after treatment or have drastically reduced quality of life. The entire process you describe sounds like a horror movie and again personally I'd rather check out. If you add the laundry list of comorbidities most severe covid patients suffer from with often already dire prognosis and quality of life why is it wrong to ask if such a stay is even worthwhile? Espescially when such a stay is extended and comes with a trade off that other people with much better prognosis can't be treated as a result?

Yeah, but urgent care is relative and a doctors job in times like these with massively limited availability of hospital beds is to determine who needs care the most and most urgently. We are racking up a massive bill of treatments that need to be performed and yes people will die because their treatments got postponed for too long. But what's the alternative? Deciding to not treat people that can be saved right now to potentially prevent future deaths? That's worse.

Personally I think it's way worse to delay the care of a young cancer patient that needs one night of ICU stay but can't because the ICU is full of seniors and obese people in extremely poor health who are intubated there weeks on end. You would prioritize the one with their entire life still in front of them no?

What if there's a nuclear war next year? It is a stupid what-if.
Again: We need to save the people that can be saved right now. We can't let people die (especially not people in their 50's and early 60's, who are those most commonly put in ventilators for Covid-19) just because it might cause us problems a year from now or a decade from now or when the Martian's deploy their doomsday ray.

It's not a what-if when resources don't come in infinite supply. Large debt is bad for public health as well because in collective systems it will necessitate budget cuts sooner or later. Not to mention the social burden of people having lost their jobs or small business over quarantine measures. All this comes at a cost. Secondly it's not a what-if when the previous sars outbreak hasn't even been two decades ago. In the meantime we had outbreaks of bird flu, foot and mouth disease, lassa fever, query fever etc that can all be attributed to the same factors that made covid such a pandemic. Covid is just a symptom of a much larger problem that one being climate change, overpopulation, loss of biodiversity, depleted resources, animal migrations and trade in wild animals. Pretty naive to believe we won't continue to endure nature's wrath and that everything begins and ends with covid.

 

[Silvanus]

What does total numbers matter when the vast majority of 'covid deaths' is of old age?

Its not. The vast majority of deaths are those who are IN their old age. They're not dying OF old age.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[stroopwafel]

No. Once again this is ridiculous because you don't understand healthcare well enough to discuss this. About half my time at work is as a triage nurse and I am not able to make the decision if someone is "too sick" (about the only time I am allowed to bounce someone is when it is utterly obvious that they don't need psychiatric care) to receive healthcare. For that you need a medical doctor who has the decade of schooling required to properly assess the complex situation that is a health status and hospitalization need.

In an ideal situation you might be right but you complained doctors and nurses are at 'breaking point' because of too much work. You can adapt a protocol it doesn't have to be set in stone. The life expectancy has increased dramatically due to increasingly advanced medical interventions but when circumstances don't match the ideal anymore there is no shame to lower the standard a bit. People might get to become 120 at one point is that even desirable? Doctors don't make these decisions in a vacuum they are also dependent on a cost/benefit ratio that is completely disproportionate at this moment in time. A society shouldn't riddle the next generation with mountains of debt out of a guilt trip to save grandpa. We already have a shrinking working population needing to finance the old and vulnerable that are exponentially growing in numbers. The medical establishment in a way is part of the problem because they are able to save near everybody at this point. Social security and healthcare eats up like 60% of the budget at this time and counting. Again in ideal circumstances this wouldn't be problem but when resources are shrinking other choices need to be made.

I mean, it is cute but also, once again, ridiculous that you think that both these concerns aren't part and parcel of a normal ambulance/triage effort. If someone says they don't want to go to a hospital the ambulance will leave them, in some countries they will need to sign a waiver, in others it will be a simply record note stating "patient declines hospital care".

This just isn't true. I read interview with ambulance driver who said it makes no sense to drive all these suspected covid patients to the hospital because they are just visibly too old and sick to still have many years in front of them. They are more than able to administer something against the difficult breathing and then just see how it goes.

You clearly don't meet enough elderly elderly people. Some certainly feel that death will be a relief and that they are just being kept alive "because", but the vast majority of them, even those with chronic illness find life worth living. Once again, this is ridiculous because you so very obviously don't know enough about the subject matter to discuss it.

When elderly still live at home you could be right but when this is no longer possible the vast majority definitely don't find life worth living. If they still receive regular visitors maybe they still find happiness in their children and/or grandchildren. That really just becomes the purpose of their continued existence. But if they don't have these or if they don't visit they are simply wasting away. I don't know the ratio between those groups but given the hyper individualistic nature of modern society it definitely isn't 'the vast majority' that still finds life worth living. You lose your independence most of the time life becomes worthless. Just a torture to be endured without respite. The last thing they would want is for young people to stop seeing eachother in an ill fated attempt to extend their misery.

Once again, this is ridiculous because you so very obviously don't know enough about the subject matter to discuss it. At the very least the responsible doctor should have made a proper assessment of the patient. Since the Swedish healthcare system is terribly structured that will never happen, so the realistic thing is to take the resident to a hospital for a medical assessment there. Most of them would never have ended up in the ICU anyway, because they would be considered too ill to have a realistic chance of surviving ICU care. Since we actually have had these residents admitted after the story broke, we also know that for the most part they are sent to a medical ward to receive as much treatment as can be justified and if they live, they get to go home. These are patients with terrible prognosis which means that they won't be high up on the list of advanced treatments, but they still deserve the chance to survive by receiving the very basis of hospital care.

How is that any different from the kind of care a nursing home is able to provide? Just another pointless trip to a hospital. They could simply consult with a GP about the appropriate opiate dosage if that was the only problem.

As an aside: You don't get to talk about cruel and inhumane in this thread. You are the one who literally suggests we euthanize them, irregardless of their own wishes, as a means to save resources for society.

That is just nonsense. How is it wrong to question if the cure isn't worse than the disease? You make it sound like resources and healthcare exist in complete isolation when the fact is that the former makes the latter possible in the first place. Politicians don't give a shit. They only care about the next election and will most likely be gone in four years. It is the next generation that will have to foot the astronomical covid bill.

 

[stroopwafel]

Dude, stop trying to pretend as if you know shit you don't. My entire point was that you won't put Mary, 95, with triple stroke, stage III heart failure, COLD and advanced dementia in a respirator, but that you will reserve that for the people who can a) endure it and b) have a good prognosis afterwards. The mean age for ventilator care due to Covid-19 is like 55, which means that on average a surviving patient is given about 25-30 extra years of life. I was trying to tell you that the medical assessment is whether the patient will benefit from ICU treatment and to ensure that only those with good prognosis receives it. Repeating your misinformed bullshit doesn't make it true.

You give the most absurd example of a hopeless case but even with the mean age for ventilator care it's very unlikely that a 55-year old who is most likely obese and suffering from a laundry list of underlying medical disorders will make it to age 90. They are only put on a ventilator because they are still at a relative young enough age for their body to take a lot of abuse. Not because their long term prognosis is so good. If it's not covid it's a heart attack or diabetes or some other infection that will do them in. If it wasn't covid most likely people wouldn't even care. Same with flu deaths among the elderly.

You are free to think that, but the priority order is clear: First you save the lives of those that need life saving right now. After that you start looking at those that can survive a short while, then those that can survive for a long time and after that you get to people that might die if left untreated.

Well that's stupid logic then. First they should save the people who still have the most years ahead of them and only require a short ICU stay. Then people who are in poor health because of their lifestyle and people who already have their whole life behind them. Again the reason why so many people end up on protracted ICU stays is b/c hospitals can't send anyone away. But if the criteria becomes as such that they don't end up in the hospital in the first place then that problem is solved.

Let me also point out that this false dichotomy of yours is bullshit because, as I've gone over twice now, you won't send people with poor general health prior to Covid-19 to the ICU. Neither do you send people doing radio- or chemotherapy to the ICU. If you've got a known cancer diagnosis and receive chemotherapy you will be doing so either with an oncology ward or, more rarely, via the ward that deals with the particular organ you've got cancer in (urology, lung medicine etc.). Chemotherapy is also mainly an outpatient procedure these days, which means you go in, get your chemo and go home the same day. Only in rare instances, often due to poor health, do chemotherapy patients stay in a ward over night.

Again this is just not true. I read an interview with an oncologist who literally said he couldn't schedule an operation for a 25-year old because it required one night in the ICU and these were full with fat and old people who were lying there weeks on end. They are actually the ones complaining that covid patients take up way too many resources and the only reason that this is so is that it isn't in their power to send them away when they are brought by the ambulance. The oncologist literally said ''we can't just leave them on the parking lot''.

It very much is. Much like a nuclear war, a Martian death ray or the return of smallpox, it is a theoretical scenario. A theoretical scenario that's obviously political in scope and not medical. Would you like to arrive at a hospital with a life threatening condition only to be told that you won't be treated right now, because someone with a more severe life threatening condition might show up at some undetermined point in the future and need the resources that could be put to saving you right now. Because that's very literally what you are suggesting we do.

Once again: You don't get to talk about cruel and inhumane in this thread, because it is you who are arguing that we let people that can be saved die for economical reasons.

How is it theoretical when there have been constant outbreaks in the last few decades? Again the world doesn't start and end with covid. Just because the world dodged the bullet with those other outbreaks doesn't mean the risk of future outbreaks is any lower. You need to plan for future contingencies will you not get completely caught by surprise the next time. And yes, that does necessitate treating your finances responsibly and not wasting it all for a respiratory virus that is harmless for more than 98% of the population.

 

[Agema]

snip

The poor dears have had their nice, comfy life interrupted and been forced to inconvenience themselves with facemasks and alcohol rub. Surely you understand a few million dead wrinklies and fatties was preferable to this intolerable hardship: after all, they deserve to just die anyway for being useless to society.

 

[ObsidianJones]

DeSantis denies involvement in wealthy Key Largo vaccination site, despite donations

Gov. Ron DeSantis denied Thursday that he had anything to do with providing COVID vaccines to a wealthy, gated Florida Keys community in January ahead of other state residents. “I’m not…

www.orlandosentinel.com

Gov. Ron DeSantis denied Thursday that he had anything to do with providing COVID vaccines to a wealthy, gated Florida Keys community in January ahead of other state residents.
“I’m not worried about your income bracket, I’m worried about your age bracket,” DeSantis said at a press conference in Crystal River when asked about a story in the Miami Herald that revealed almost all the senior residents of the Ocean Reef enclave in Key Largo got inoculated by Jan. 22.
The Herald report revealed that the management of Ocean Reef Club, a 2,500-acre gated community with golf courses, restaurants and its own airport, told residents that day that more than 1,200 seniors had been vaccinated over the previous two weeks. In all, 17 Ocean Reef residents had donated $5,000 each to the governor’s political committee through December 2020, the Herald reported using state records.
A month after the vaccinations Ocean Reef resident Bruce Rauner, the former Republican governor of Illinois, wrote DeSantis’ political committee a $250,000 check.
The governor said the vaccines must have come from a hospital system. The Keys Weekly newspaper reported on Jan. 21 that Baptist Health South Florida had offered vaccines to senior Ocean Reef residents, in a story that focused on the frustration of other area seniors in trying to get shots.
The Herald reported Thursday that by Jan. 19, Baptist Health announced that it was canceling all vaccination appointments booked for Jan. 20 and later and no new appointments would be taken.
A spokeswoman for Monroe County said that like all early vaccines, the doses received by Baptist Health were allocated to the hospital group by the state because it met the state’s criteria, and the hospital then decided how to distribute them.
Ocean Reef Medical Center is aligned in cooperation with Baptist Medical, and “they received the vaccines as part of the Governor’s program to vaccinate communities with a population of 65+ with a homeowner’s association and onsite medical center with the ability to administer the vaccines,” Kristen Livengood said in a written statement.
“Communities like The Villages also received the same,” she said. “The allocations were coordinated through Baptist and the State of Florida, not through Monroe County. We were aware they received them, but they were not FDOH-Monroe County allocations.”
Baptist Health and Ocean Reef did not return calls for comment Thursday.
The Herald report comes after weeks of controversy over whether the wealthy communities targeted by the DeSantis’ vaccine “pods” were influenced by political considerations.
Three communities in Charlotte, Manatee and Sarasota counties developed by Republican fundraiser Pat Neal were chosen by DeSantis for pop-up sites. Neal contributed $125,000 to DeSantis in 2018 and 2019.