In hospitals across the country, doctors are noticing an unsurprising phenomenon: the people who are getting admitted to critical care are all unvaccinated.
The trend appears to be occurring at hospitals nationwide.
“I haven’t had anyone that’s been fully vaccinated become critically ill,” said Dr. Josh Denson, a pulmonary medicine and critical care physician at Tulane University Medical Center in New Orleans.
It’s been the same for Dr. Ken Lyn-Kew, a pulmonologist in the critical care department at Denver’s National Jewish Health: “None of our ICU patients has been vaccinated.”
Unvaccinated children, too, seem to be at increased risk for severe illness.
“In our local hospitals, the kids that are getting sick are the ones that are not vaccinated,” said Dr. Natasha Burgert, a pediatrician in Overland Park, Kansas, and a national spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
I saw the strangest thing on a television in Washington state: I watched Biden make his announcement that the US was going to ship 500 million vaccine doses to economically disadvantaged countries, then cut to commercial — the state is giving out all kinds of incentives to get people to come in for the COVID vaccine, like automatically entering your name into a lottery with a $250,000 prize.
I don’t get it. Not dying is not enough of a reward?
“Not dying is not enough of a reward?” Owning the libs is the reward.
I think the key problem is that the vaccine refusers don’t believe that they are at risk of dying from covid.
A horrible death is apparently not too great a risk for a chance to pwn the libs.
Who do you think people will trust, the lying government with its lying scientists and lying pharmaceutical companies and their lies, or some totally trustworthy swears he’s a doctor dude in a video ranting about the secret plan of the global elites to use the covid vax to depopulate the earth as shared by your mum on facebook?
/s
=8)-DX
Yeah, California is doing reasonably well with vaccinations, but the state is now offering lottery prizes and vacations to randomly selected people who participate in vaccination programs. Of course, our right wingers and anti-vaxxers are furious and charge that Gov. Newsom approved the giveaways to court public favor in the face of a recall election. Too bad for the clown car full of candidates trying to succeed him. I got in line for my shots as soon as it was possible, but my family is loaded with hesitant or anti-vax types. (I’ll be sure to wear my vaccination button to the family reunion this fall.)
This is how death cults work.
My parents are both in their 80s, are covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (tax-funded by the provincial government), and only got their 2nd shots yesterday. And that’s only because they worked to try and book an appointment for their shot daily, before one came up. So the many, many Americans who refuse a vaccine despite the giveaways for vaccine recipients, and despite the literal life or death issue for them and their loved ones, is bonkers to me.
Imagine if these people had been around when the polio vaccine had first been used?
No, not dying is not enough reward. Most unvaxxed folks are already not dying.
We live in a capitalist hellscape where nothing is free and everything profits someone. Usually someone else. They are entirely justified in not wanting to trust claims of “life-saving” and “free!” Those are sure signs that someone’s trying to take advantage of them. But who? In this case it looks like big phrama is going to play the role by supplying annual coronavirus jabs. Don’t worry – first one’s free. Well . . . actually subsidized by the government. As was their R&D.
@kome (6) Actually, the folks who are ritualizing things and look to continue to for the foreseeable future are the vaxxers. Stepping outside the situation, they are the compassionate people who are preaching sure accursed death if we don’t all follow the true path.
I’m just happy that we’ll have a few more insufferable rich people. That’s exactly what we needed — excellent work, everyone. I mean, without lottery winners, I’m sure civilization would collapse within days. So, that’s sort of important, I guess. But on a more personal level, it really just makes me feel all tingly on the inside, knowing that they’re up there in the sky and trickling down on all of us. And how could I forget the freedom? I feel so fucking free. Yep, it couldn’t get any better than this.
I can think of few medical breakthroughs in recent years that have exceeded expectations as much as the new mRNA vaccines. For the first couple of months, the media was almost surprised that vaccination had succeeded in cutting down the rate of contagion. Now the story they’re pushing is: waiting for the other shoe to drop in the form of the delta variant. I realize it could happen, but I’m going to stay optimistic.
I can’t understand the mindset of not trusting the vaccines at this point. At the same time, I’d rather reach at least partial herd immunity to the point where even the free riders are off the hook. We’ll see what happens now that the masks are coming off in many places.
@ 7 HidariMak
Ack. I am about due for my second Oxford-Astra-Zenica shot through a local pharmacy. I hope things go better!
I note that Jason Kenney in Alberta is giving away lottery tickets with each vaccination. Presumably he will screw this up too. Lotto Vaxx
@ 11 PaulBC
I have run into a couple of vaccine-hesitant types recently. One is just phobic about any medical procedure and the other thinks they are young and healthy and covid-19 is no worse than the flu!
It’s even worse than 99% of the hospitalized Covid-19 patients being unvaccinated.
Quite a few of them are also Covid-19 deniers who believe the virus doesn’t exist.
These patients can be hard to treat.
They come in sick with a fever, having trouble breathing, and barely able to move while knowing that the Covid-19 virus doesn’t exist.
The health care workers around them are all suited up in full Personal Protective Equipment gear.
When it dawns on them that they might well die, they panic.
They frequently start screaming at the health care workers, sometimes attack them, and sometimes try to pull off their PPE gear. Because the health care workers are all part of the hoax.
When they are dying or die, the family shows up.
They start screaming at the health care workers some more.
Accusing them of killing the patient because the Covid-19 virus doesn’t exist.
Security is called.
They know what to do.
The family is escorted out of the hospital.
This has happened thousands of times. It is happening many times today somewhere as another 340 unvaccinated patients…die of the Covid-19 virus.
jrkrideau@13 I understand medical hesitancy, but I’d wonder if they take any non-essential medication or would undergo an elective procedure like laser eye surgery. There’s also increasing evidence of long term effects of COVID, including younger patients, at least if this NYT story can be trusted.
Where in the other Washington, where pot is legal, we are offering, “Joints for jabs”, as an incentive
These are the people the lotteries are trying to attract: Even after a superspreader infects 10% of a town, the solution to COVID remains a tough sell. They already nearly died. I guess some 10% of the town got immunized by being sick, some 40% by vaccination, and the rest?
OTOH in King county there are still some groups with <70% vaccination rate: See https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccination.aspx
By geography, it’s the rural areas of the east, the suburbs to the south of Seattle, and a few zip codes in south-east and central Seattle. By age it’s mostly people under 30. And then there is the racial divide, with lower rates among black and Hispanic people. Only some of the differences are driven by hesitancy (which is more likely to be amendable to incentives in the form of prizes). Some of it is caused by people fearing consequences for missing work and similar access issues.
anat@17 I have no objection at all to vaccine lotteries. I wonder how they determined the payoff, though. Would a smaller payoff with higher probability be more effective? Or for that matter, maybe the reverse is true.
I saw a meme posted yesterday that compared the lottery for the vaccine in Alberta to a predator offering candy to a kid to get into their van. So not only is not dying not enough of a reward, but the adding of an incentive to get vaccinated is just more proof for the anti-vaxxers that the vaccine must be unsafe. After all, if it was safe and effective, you wouldn’t have to bribe people to take it, would you? (My response was that it is actually like a parent telling their kid to swallow the medicine and then they’ll get a cookie, but I doubt that will affect their view much.)
Maybe it’s time to set up a quarantine facility for these plague rats. A nice and quiet out-of-the-way island. Like Attu, for example.
I am happy to report that not only are all 4 adults vaccinated–and it’s been long enough since the 2nd shots that we should all have as much immunity as we’re going to get developed by now–but my 13-year-old grandson gets his second shot tomorrow. So the entire household will have as much immunity as it’s going to get by the beginning of July.
As for the “I won’t get vaccinated” crowd… Since it’s mostly Republicans (30% say they won’t get the shots), perhaps the tack to take would be to point out that the end result will be that it’ll be even harder for them to win elections because their numbers will be reduced by COVID deaths.
@14 Raven: is that the situation? Not even death changes their mind? One would think that just a glimpse of that tall black figure would be enough of an incentive to cut the crap and shut up already. These people may be truly unsalvageable.
Myself, I’ll get my injection this Saturday. Can’t come soon enough…
re OP:
Let me join in saying that the incentive is for those who think the vaccine is pointless [pun], that the disease only affects other people, and the side effects are too painful. They don’t see the knife dangling over their head to believe there is an actual threat.
Raven at 14 wrote:
It must be horrifying from the POV of a covid denier who gets hospitalized for covid.
You know you’re severely ill. In fact, you’re probably feeling you might die any minute now, even if that’s not quite true. Maybe you’re a bit delirious. Maybe you’ve never been hospitalized before. The hospital is a scary, strange place, and the nurses aren’t very helpful at making you feel less horrible.
They they diagnose you with the fake disease. The one hospitals use to make money off the feds, if not something more nefarious. You just know they aren’t going to find out your real disease and treat it appropriately. They do not have your best interest in mind.
@24: Yeah, it must be hard going through life while being that stupid, but the good news is that they won’t have to for much longer.
The bad news, of course, is all the trauma they’re inflicting on hospital workers and others while they’re doing so.
Sticking with anat’s King County example, the chance of a young fit healthy person dying of Covid is essentially zero. In 2021, out of the roughly 480,000 people in the 0 – 19 age group there have been no Covid related deaths. Since they started tracking in February 2020, two people in this age group have died.
I know a 16-year-old who is undecided about getting vaccinated. He doesn’t want to feel sick. Of course, I want him to get vaccinated – for all sorts of reasons – but telling him that there is a realistic chance he might die without it would not be truthful.
marner:
Well, it’s a shitload higher than the chance of winning a lottery…
More to the point, death is not the only worry.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_COVID
lumipuma@24
For people who think like that it doesn’t make sense to go to a hospital.
They might as well stay home and save themselves and the hospital staff the trouble.
Around here, masks are optional for the fully vaccinated in several settings. Trouble is, the odds are that the person refusing to wear a mask is also refusing to vaccinate. And the person who made sure to be vaccinated — is also wearing a mask when not strictly necessary.
Yes.
I’ve never even heard of a Covid-19 virus denier in the hospital changing their mind before death. I suppose it might rarely happen.
These people die insisting that the Covid-19 virus is a hoax.
They sometimes rationalize it. They have the flu, pneumonia, lung cancer, anything but the Coronavirus Covid-19. They often accuse the health care workers of being actors that are out to kill them.
.1. This isn’t uncommon at all. It’s happened thousands of times already.
It probably happened a few dozen times today somewhere in the USA.
There are 14,000 Covid-19 patients in the US hospitals right now. The vast majority are Covid-19 virus deniers and/or antivaxxers. 10% will die.
.2. The families of these patients don’t change their mind either.
They watch their relative die while insisting the Covid-19 virus doesn’t exist.
They also frequently start screaming at the health care workers and call them hired killers.
I’ve seen this movie before.
A long time ago, I used to have to deal with HIV/AIDS denialists.
That problem sort of went away.
All the HIV/AIDS denialists who were HIV+ died. Of AIDS.
Since HIV kills very slowly, these people had long drawn out deaths but they still never changed their minds.
In some cases, they ended up taking other people with them such as when a mother infected her young child.
These days there are very few HIV/AIDS denialists.
The HAART drugs are so good that it is easier to just get on them and live a normal long life.
@John Morales
Maybe? Depends on the lottery. I also doubt you only consider lottery type odds when determining your personal risk acceptance (I know I know. Depends on the lottery).
Yes, hence my statement, “I want him to get vaccinated for all sorts of reasons”. It is just that the risk of his personal death is not one of them.
They do exactly that quite often.
At times in my local area, for a variety of reasons, most people who died of Covid-19 virus, died at home and never made it to a hospital.
Quite often, when the Covid-19 virus deniers end up in the hospital, they are very sick and pretty far gone.
They wait way too long and arrive by ambulance to the ER.
One case I heard about was from an EMT. The guy refused to wear a mask even in the ambulance. He also attacked the ambulance workers and tried to pull off their PPE gear while screaming about the virus hoax. Which of course, is extremely dangerous for the health care workers.
By the time they got to the hospital, his blood oxygen levels were very low and he was heading towards comatose.
By the end of the day he was dead.
Another reason some people do not get vaccinated: Fear of needles. But there are solutions. Over half of adults unvaccinated for COVID-19 fear needles – here’s what’s proven to help
We can hope that some people eventually get the lesson that too rigidly held beliefs can harm before it kills them.
In Australian news: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-18/wa-aged-care-nurses-threaten-to-quit-over-mandatory-covid-jab/100226312
(WA is Western Australia)
I’m completely unsurprised to see drew@9 (one of our “Biden is just as bad as Trump if not worse” idiots), unable to deal with these two simple facts at once:
1) Big Pharma is profitting mightily from the pandemic, and plans to continue doing so.
2) It’s just utterly fucking stupid to refuse an effective vaccine against a highly dangerous and contagious disease.