SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Are.
Sometimes, they will outsource the admin portion through an insurance company but it's mostly their bucks.
It's cheaper that way.

 

"The Pfizer-BioNTech covid-19 vaccine is “likely” to have been responsible for at least 10 deaths of frail elderly people in nursing homes in Norway, an expert review commissioned by the Norwegian Medicines Agency has concluded."

" While emphasising considerable uncertainty around its conclusions, the expert group acknowledged a risk that adverse reactions to the vaccines among very frail patients could initiate a cascade of complications, which in the worst case scenario could lead to earlier death.

Extremely frail patients

“Frail patients can benefit from vaccination because they are at great risk of serious illness and even death if they become infected with the covid-19 virus,” said Sigurd Hortemo, senior medical consultant at the Norwegian Medicines Agency. “Nevertheless, the expert group believes that, for some of these frail patients, common adverse reactions may have contributed to a more serious course of their disease.”

The group noted that more thorough assessment of the benefits and risks of vaccination could have been made for some very frail elderly people, particularly during the first few weeks of the vaccine’s use.  People with a very short life expectancy have little to gain from being vaccinated, it said, noting a genuine risk that the time of death will be brought forward and that they will experience adverse reactions to the vaccine in the last days of their life.

The benefits of vaccination for very frail people with very short life expectancy should therefore be carefully assessed against the associated risks, and it may often be better not to vaccinate, the group recommended. However, the guidelines on risk assessment—issued by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health shortly after the first reported deaths of frail elderly patients after vaccination—were adequate, it said. These advise that doctors should assess such patients individually to determine whether the benefits of vaccination outweigh the side effects. The guidelines recommend that, ahead of vaccination, doctors should consider the benefits and disadvantages of giving the vaccine to extremely frail patients (such as those whose frailty is ranked 8 or 9 on the Clinical Frailty Scale or equivalent) or terminally ill patients."

Clinical Frailty Scale:



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My then-99.8 year old Aunt caught the virus a couple months ago, fortunately well after being fully vaccinated. She came through with nothing more than a runny nose, essentially asymptomatic, and we later had a successful 100.000 birthday party at the end of last month.

Looking at the above scale, I'd place her between 6 and 7 on the frailty scale, only for physical issues, not mental.

 

Another wrinkle, at least in some places like the Great State of Indiana, is that self-funding puts them outside the jurisdiction of the state insurance regulator.

If there's a problem, you can still go to the US Dept. of Labor, which will have jurisdiction if the self-funded insurer is "a private-sector employer or bona fide union".

If it's something other than one of those, you can go, well, wherever you want, for the good it'll do you.

Maybe that all folds into "it's cheaper that way."

 

Unlikely if this will put a stop to all of the FOMO going around :

Dr David Bauer: 'Pfizer vaccine produces fewer key antibodies'

Dr David Bauer: 'Pfizer vaccine produces fewer key antibodies' | Daily Mail Online

 

I stand most humbly corrected.
I was wrong.
My bad....

The AAAS, IS federally funded....

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) - InfluenceWatch .

 

dang, that's what i got. moderna is local, yet unavailable

 

OTOH, I had such mild (not even a sore arm!) reactions to jab 1 and jab 2 that if there need to be booster jabs, no objection from me....

 

So now the WHO is recommending that even people that got both shots should wear masks for the delta variant.
Am I to assume we need a vaccine for the delta now and that the original is useless against it?

 

the article linked above said that pfizer is less effective, but who knows for sure?

i'm sticking with mask and social distancing. i'd prefer the virus on my computer

 

... only if you take 'only' 96% (Pfizer-BioNTech) and 92% (Oxford-AstraZeneca) effectiveness against hospitalization as equivalent to "useless".

Public Health England: Vaccines highly effective against hospitalisation from Delta variant

These figures are lower than their respective effectivenesses against the original strains, hence the guidance to continue using other protection because the pandemic hasn't been vanquished. But I can't describe them as "useless".

 

Nothing I've read so far put 'useless' in my mind, only maybe 'reduced effectiveness'. For the currently-circulating variants, anyway.

Taking your question more broadly, it does kind of hint at how it could be good if we can operate the world less like a massive-scale variant-breeding laboratory than we have been.

 

i would also like to see more studies besides 'the crick institute'

 

My background is in industrial chemistry, so my "useless" comment was admittedly a little naive. It does seem like Covid is
mutating fast and furious, though.

 

i wasn't casting aspersions, just never use the daily mail as a source for anything

 

the daily mail was a video, i can't be bothered.
the other link was msn, which wanted my cookies. i passed. you have to earn my cookies