“For the love of God, what are you waiting for?” says Alberta premier Jason Kenney to the 30% of the population still not vaccinated. He calls the situation in Alberta now, with full ICUs and ERs, “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” as 91% of COVID patients currently in ICU have not been vaccinated.

The Alberta health minister said that the “delta variant moves through the population faster than previous forms of the virus”. “Vaccines are not failing”, he says, “it’s a case of a more contagious variant” (delta) which is putting strain on hospitals. You have a 50-60x higher risk of being hospitalized if you’re not vaccinated, he said.

Since August 1, there’s been a steady increase in the number of COVID patients in ICU. They’re having to cancel non-emergency surgeries because of bed and staffing shortages. (NB: Non-emergency doesn’t mean it’s in a patient’s best interests to wait longer for care).

The health minister stated that they need to maintain the capacity of the health care system to help everyone. This is a challenge in the face of an ICU full of COVID patients.

Alberta has a younger population than other provinces.

They are now offering people $100.00 to get vaccinated. (A measure I’ve never seen before COVID!).

Meanwhile, health officials are having to build more capacity in the hospitals due to ERs and ICUs being at or beyond capacity, with more surge expected to come.

Too, Alberta instituted a lottery ($1M prize) for those yet to be vaccinated. There have been two winners to date with a third lottery coming up. (Wah, not fair. All I got after vaccination was a little Band-Aid on my ouchie).

Canada has 10 provinces and 3 territories. Quebec has had the highest number of COVID-19 cases, Ontario 2nd highest and Alberta is 3rd. BC, where I live, has the 4th highest number of cases. I live in one of the health regions with the highest number of cases in this province. That's a big reason I couldn't wait to get in and get jabbed. My turn came up in June (on D-Day).

Kenney didn't literally mean "for the love of God" but it was an expression of his frustration in the face of a COVID surge just as fall is around the corner (flu etc season) as well as school starting up again.

But whatever gets a person in for their jab is OK with me. I wouldn't have minded a million dollar reward though. But, as they say, doing the right thing is reward itself.

    

You are so right, EOD. Unfortunately, we haven't reached consensus on many things, it often seems. Definitely not in this case.

But it's the right thing for me. That's all I have control over, pretty much.

    I hope that my conceited belief in a standard regulated by proven science is not only justified but on a path to near-universal adoption.

    What are the barriers and obstacles to adopting facts as guiding principles?  I mean besides random as well as organized religion...  I think one obstacle is the concept of Proud Ignorance.  You can decide for yourself what that means.

    I think that it is intelligent to want what's best for yourself and that the more you know about "2 + 2 = 4" facts, the greater your opportunity for recognizing Truth.

    While it may sound cruel (a non-factor in evolution), the Covid series of viruses may be thinning the human herd of its more doltish members.  If the facts show that more unvaccinated humans are dying than vaccinated humans, a very defensible point of view would be that the vaccines deter a deadly outcome.

    "Follow the Data!" is a wonderful point of view, until doing so steals the thunder from how you make your living, or how you pander to your electoral base.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>    ... a standard regulated by proven science

Sounds like a fine idea to me.

> ... adopting facts as guiding principles

I thought we had this. I must have been in la-la land, as my dad called a state of being oblivious.
 
> ... the more you know about "2 + 2 = 4" facts, the greater your opportunity for recognizing Truth.

That's a good way to put it. I'm having a tough time lately keeping it courteous. People I would never expect are suddenly spouting illogical beliefs. I tried to listen to a video today by a dr recommending off-label usage of a certain Drug that Shall Not be Named (by me, in this thread at least) and I didn't last more than a couple of minutes, not even long enough to ascertain what type of degree this guy has. His video is full of comments by people giving testimonials about the marvels of the drug he's touting but no scientific evidence or professional trials to verify the anecdotes. You know, the way we've usually done medicine?

> If the facts show that more
> unvaccinated humans are dying than vaccinated
> humans, a very defensible point of view would be
> that the vaccines deter a deadly outcome.

Exactly. And we are seeing this. The stats are in. But then you get the anti folks saying they don't trust the stats. Or the doctors. Or the hospitals. Or the spokespeople. Or the scientists. I don't try to reason with them any more. It just depletes my energy when the outcome is already decided. Which is that they don't listen plus they constantly move the goalposts. They have their narrative and that's all she wrote. I know they would say we are the same on this side of the vaccine fence. But I'm fine with the science side. It's been good to me so far.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2021 07:22PM by Nightingale.

Thanks, catnip. :)

I wrote in Facebook that I had a scheduled surgery canceled due to COVID over taking the hospital. Somehow a local news station in Chattanooga saw my post and wanted to interview me on their news broadcast on how COVID is negatively affecting those who do not have the virus. I was worried about retribution here in the South. My county is only 40% vaccinated - one of the lowest in the nation. I did not see how it would motivate the unvaccinated to shift their position as it is clear they do not care about others, so I declined.

Eric K Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I wrote in Facebook that I had a scheduled surgery
> canceled due to COVID over taking the hospital.

> My county is
> only 40% vaccinated - one of the lowest in the
> nation.

Eric, I'm so sorry about your cancelled surgery. It's already a stressful situation and then you have to deal with this.

Only 40% vaccinated - wow. Alberta's number is 70% fully vaccinated, as in B.C., and that is considered still too low. They often spoke of herd immunity at the beginning but it's predicted that 80-90% of the population would need to be vaccinated to achieve it, if even then (due to the number and virulence of all the variants).

Here's a CBC article that discusses herd immunity (from May and we know things change quickly so nothing is written in stone). The article mentions the math involved in the herd immunity goal:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/herd-immunity-threshold-canada-covid-1.6013685


Excerpt:

"It's not herd immunity or bust.

"Unlike politicians, epidemiologists don't obsess over a precise number, which can be hard to pin down. In practice, they say, the closer we get to that threshold — whatever it actually is — the better. And as more people are immunized, life can begin returning to something that feels much more normal."

(For the math, see the article - I don't do math!).

-----

Eric, in Alberta they've cancelled 60% of the scheduled surgeries. I don't blame people for being outraged that, seemingly, those who are immunized are suffering due to the many who are not. The latter are taking up most of the ER and ICU beds, crowding out nearly everyone else due to sheer numbers but also due to the contagion factor.

Too, many staff members are feeling like burnout is lurking just around the corner in their own futures. It's hard to come back from extremes like that.

Eric:

>I did not see how it would motivate the
> unvaccinated to shift their position as it is
> clear they do not care about others.

I don't blame you for not wanting to go public about your experience.

It's a tough realization that others don't realize or don't care that their actions affect others in so many ways, from cancelled surgeries, delayed care or lack of care for anything less than a screaming emergency now, physicians having to consult with very ill patients in hallways or parking lots (so no privacy, no quick care, less than 100% quality care, treatment delays and cancellations, etc).

Where I totally give up, and scream inside, is when someone starts with the "everybody's lying" excuse for not getting vaccinated. Every physician, nurse, allied health, scientist, virologist, health care expert, et al, in the known universe is in cahoots to trick the entire population worldwide. Yeah, OK.

Even I, at that point, save my breath when my usual approach is to try to keep on discussing and explaining. Just. No. Point.

I just finished reading an article about how locally, surgeries are being postponed or cancelled because hospital bed space is being taken up by unvaccinated COVID folks. The article mentioned that of the 109 deaths in my county since April (when the vaccine was made widely available), ALL of them were unvaccinated.

So the writer of the article posed this question - Should hospitals send unvaccinated patients to the back of the line? After contemplating that question, I arrived at the following -

If unvaccinated by choice - Back of the line
If unvaccinated due to medical reasons - In line for treatment
If unvaccinated due to religious reasons - Back of the line. Ask your god to treat you.

This happened to my family. Essential surgery on a child got pushed back due to overwhelming COVID patients. We had it scheduled several weeks ago waiting for the specialist and hospital to have an opening, only to get bumped. The surgery was not elective for this child. We've been completely stressed out. I'm pissed because it didn't need to be this way.

I'm sorry to hear this, Dagny.

"Follow the Data!"

What if they are lying about the data, like those pesky anti-mormons?

Why would they lie? What's in it for them?

Following the data has led to the near-eradication of a number of illnesses, including the terrible viral illness of Polio. The problem is, from the licensing of the Sabin Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV,) to the near eradication worldwide of polio, took more than 50 years. And I'm going to bet that vaccine acceptance has been a lot higher with the OPV and subsequent polio vaccines.

Do we really want our children, grandchildren, etc. to be grappling with Covid long after many of us are gone?

Alberta is sociologically much closer to being North Montana than it is western Canada. It's startling to see Alberta officials pleading for responsible behavio(u)r.

I think Winnipeg had 12 cases one day last week, and Manitoba had about 45. Utah, with three times the population, has been having 12 hundred to 16 hundred cases a day. Mitigation and control measures work.

Winnipeg is well over half the population of the entire province. It's kind of like the Wasatch front in Utah - the bulk of the provincial population is concentrated in one relatively small space.

The reason the covid cases are higher outside Winnipeg even though they have far fewer people is because there are a lot of religious fundies, mostly in SE Manitoba, who refuse vaccination. Some of them are actually leaving the country and moving to places like Costa Rica and (I think) Honduras. They are mostly Mennonites, which I thought were saner than that. "Mennonite" is a pretty broad umbrella, so I suppose the ones I knew are saner.

I went to a Mennonite church for a while, BoJ. I considered them mainstream (although with JW and Mo in my background anything else seems mainstream). In fact, one of the Mennonite preachers at that church did pastoral care work at the hospital where I worked and his approach was multi-faith (kind of has to be, by definition, but...).

There are offshoots of offshoots but colour me very surprised at who all is anti-vax re COVID-19. I would never have foreseen that it would be a religious thing.

The Mennonite Central Committee is a widely respected and admire organization in Manitoba for its work responding to disasters, resettling refuges, both locally and around the world. They often work in conjunction with the provincial government, something that would be problematic in the US.

Between that sterling reputation, and some hilarious satirical websites ( dailybonnet.com is basically The Onion for Mennonites, and Marginal Mennonite Society on FB ), I am surprised to see the ugly side.

Yes, BoJ, same with the MCC here in BC. Refugees from various disasters often relocate to BC and the MCC is one of the main helping organizations. They have shops around and about where we can donate to help people in need.

Good point re how they work well with the provincial govt. That enhances the assistance both bodies can provide. Too bad, as you say, that that type of partnership isn't more common.

:)

An ER doc from Lethbridge posted an open letter today that told of Lethbridge ICU filling up with overflow from Medicine Hat ICU.
People are still refusing vaccines. University students in Calgary were interviewed and some were still in the "I have to do more research before I'll feel comfortable getting vaccinated".

Maddening and disheartening to people like me who lived through the polio epidemic of the 50's. I actually had polio 6 months before Dr. Jonas Salk's vaccine was out but thankfully my symptoms were very mild.

in b 4 ~



all the people who got vaccinated for free ~



feeling foolish now ~

Not really.

I'd rather be safely vaccinated than hold out for a mere $100.00 and chance contracting the virus before I can spend the dosh.

    

Meanwhile I read that Oklahoma has had a mass of people seeking treatment for overdoses of the horse designer.

I swear my tablet said d e w o r m e r when I hit post.

Hahahaha. I was going to ask.

You can hit the edit button & fix it if you want. I think edits are possible for 24 hrs & then your post is set in stone.

I get seriously impatient with crazy auto-corrects myself.

    If you have Jesus in your heart, he auto-corrects your behavior, so that you can live with him in Heaven.

While the premier is correct that the unvaccinated are driving cases here in Alberta, he's completely ignoring his government's part in it. On July 1st, he and the Health Minister with much fanfair and ceremony announced that Covid is behind us and "Alberta is Open for Summer!" All restrictions were removed, and people were encouraged to go to the Calgary Stampede, attend concerts and festivals, go to restaurants and pubs, get their football and hockey season tickets because "we are back to normal". And by the way, no masking up needed for any of that either.

It wasn't hard to see where this was going to go.

On July 1, we were averaging about 40 to 65 cases per day in Alberta. On August 1, the daily average had crept above 200 cases. As of September 1 the rate is over 1000/day and rising.

This is the second or third time that an attempt has been made to have Albertans "do the right thing" without being compelled to by the law. The problem is that the 70% of us who will do that already have. The remaining 30% are unlikely to ever willingly get on board with the rest of us. Unfortunately, they are the government's base, so the rest of us now get to pay them to be vaccinated.

Kissing up for votes v. Doing what’s right …

This is too often the issue, serving others interests v. serving your own interests.

Thanks for your view from the inside, looking in. Most interesting.

looking in Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> On July 1st,
> he [the premier] and the Health Minister with much fanfair and
> ceremony announced that Covid is behind us and
> "Alberta is Open for Summer!" All restrictions
> were removed, and people were encouraged to go to
> the Calgary Stampede, attend concerts and
> festivals, go to restaurants and pubs, get their
> football and hockey season tickets because "we are
> back to normal". And by the way, no masking up
> needed for any of that either.

> It wasn't hard to see where this was going to go.

It's scary to realize that we "ordinary" citizens can see ahead but the govt apparently can't. Frustrated people here in BC have been asking too why we go from mandates to personal choice (especially re masks) overnight as recently occurred. We went from masks being mandated to being recommended (a big step down). Within two weeks our numbers too were way up, again, and the mask mandate came back. Public health enjoyed a lot of public buy-in to all the restrictions from the beginning but after this latest open-up & quick reversal there's a lot less willing compliance. For a significant percentage of the population if you say "masks recommended" rather than "masks mandatory" they are cheerfully going to choose No Mask, with the easily anticipated consequences of a quick reversal back to mandates. The more often officials change course like that the less patience, understanding and compliance there are.

I ill-advisedly attended a social occasion last week right after the mask mandate was re-instituted. I was shocked to see large tables full of people close together, talking, laughing and eating (so no masks) and even the man in charge walking around with his mask underneath his nose, after announcing that masks were mandatory unless you were at your own table (yeah, but there were too many people per table and strangers sitting with strangers - not recommended). The alcohol was flowing too so inhibitions were out the window, as happens.

I wasn't happy and we left early but not before an hour or so. It was my birthday and so I felt a bit obligated to stay, even though the whole event wasn't for me.

I won't ever do that again as I spent a stressful week worrying that I had been exposed. The unmasked stranger lady sitting next to me leaned right over into my face at one point to laughingly ask me a question. Ack.

It's a case now of short term pain (masks, isolation where necessary, etc, measures again) for long term gain (hopefully an end in sight to this pandemic).

I do think (hope) that the various governments (provincial and federal) now get how people think and how difficult it is to keep taking a step forward and 3 back over and over. Maybe we have to hunker down, agonizingly, again in the short term to finally tame this beast. Especially with school starting this coming week. What a nightmare for teachers, parents and students, again.


looking in:

> This is the second or third time that an attempt
> has been made to have Albertans "do the right
> thing" without being compelled to by the law. The
> problem is that the 70% of us who will do that
> already have. The remaining 30% are unlikely to
> ever willingly get on board with the rest of us.
> Unfortunately, they are the government's base, so
> the rest of us now get to pay them to be
> vaccinated.

Yes. Exactly. Same thing in other provinces. I'm not a fan of the $100.00 payment either. I heard Kenney say they have to try everything, whatever it takes. So how about $1000.00 for the really opposed? Bad precedent. I think it shows that he's desperate. Not a good look for a leader.

Good luck, looking in. I think we're going to need it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2021 05:50PM by Nightingale.

Kenney stated they have "turned over every stone" to find a solution to the vaccine hesitancy in Alberta. Well, the one stone he resists turning over is instituting a vaccine "passport" which is supported by something like 77% of Albertans. But again, not by his base.

I know resistance has ramped up in BC as well. I was so depressed watching on the news the protests at Vancouver General and the hospital in Kamloops. Blocking ambulance routes, and harassing staff and clients trying to enter and exit. People really are stupid sometimes...

Thanks Nightingale, and good luck to you as well. You're right, we are all going to need it!

Then there is those crazy Mormons in Cardston. The current ctive infection rate there is among the highest regions of the province. How they (the church wards) have not been listed as outbreak locations shows how well they play the game but shift responsibility. Huge numbers of members with some of the few ties coming through ward council. (Ie a relief society pres and a bishopric councillor.). There is an outbreak that the locals know is tied to a funeral where prob 500 attended and a contagious hugger hugging almost everyone. A youth fireside where they were packed in the stake center. A husband and wife shouting antivax for months both lost their recent battle's to covid within 2 weeks of each other.

Active cases to ignorant to stay home. They don't love their neighbors, it's just lip service.

They're

Making Alberta Great Again

Your post prompted me to look up Mormons and COVID. I started another thread on a study I came across that shows 50% of Mormons are vaccine hesitant or refuseniks. Surprising when you think they still endorse following their leaders and also the idea of loving their neighbours.

I recently saw an article about the husband and wife who both died of COVID. I didn't realize they were Mormons.

How come he didn't say "for the love of reason" ?

Yeah well, “reason” is a foreign concept to this premier.

I looked up the timeline for the Sabin oral polio vaccine, which was licensed in the U.S. in 1963 (like Covid, polio is also a virus.) From the time that it was licensed, it took more than 30 years to eradicate polio in the Americas, nearly 40 in Europe, and more than 50 years to get polio nearly eradicated worldwide.

I am starting to think that the eradication of Covid may be a long haul as well.

Interesting info, summer. Thanks.

Yes re the long haul, it seems. I heard at the beginning (not sure if it changed along the way) that if we could get a high percentage of the population vaccinated we could prevent development of variants. But, as we all know, not enough people got their vaccinations and several variants quickly emerged, some more virulent than the original, prolonging the pandemic.

If we're already sick of the whole thing, think of it being with us for another 50 years (as with polio)!

I'm tired...

The percentage of a population that must be vaccinated to gain herd immunity depends on the speed with which the disease spreads. That speed is measured by R(o), which is the number of unsuspecting people whom any one individual will infect. With the original COVID, the R(o) was around 2.5 and implied a required vaccination rate of something like 60-80%.

Some of the subsequent variants have much higher R(o)s. Delta's, for instance, is somewhere between 5 and 8. If that is correct, herd immunity will require something closer to 100% vaccination. I don't think that is possible in today's world, so herd immunity may no longer be in the cards.

There's a second scenario besides eventual conquest.

Polio is a conservative virus; it is relatively stable over time, which is why there hasn't been a need for radically new vaccines since the 1950s and 1960s. Such a virus is relatively easy to vanquish.

There are other viruses, however, that are unstable and mutate so fast that they cannot be conquered. Influenza is one of those. Every year (well, twice a year) scientists must design new vaccines to catch up with the virus's mutations. Some years the scientists guess right and the vaccines work well, sometimes they are not as effective and people only get partial protection. So people have no choice but to live with annual shots and frequent bouts of the illness.

COVID looks more like influenza than polio, as evidenced by the rapid emergence of new variants and the diminution in the efficacy of existing vaccines. I don't think the odds are high of eradicating COVID given the speed of its mutations and its prevalence in parts of the world that are both densely populated and medically backward. So my hunch is that it's too late to eradicate the disease.

If that's right, then we'll eventually fall into a pattern of periodic vaccinations that are more or less potent against the latest COVID strain/s. It will be like a very dangerous version of the flu. That's the price of having failed to nip it in the bud either in Wuhan, before China let millions of people travel for the New Year, or soon after its spread to other parts of the world.

Most excellent post, Lot's Wife.

Thank you.

My pleasure, NG.

LW. That info is so crucial it should have its own thread, imho, just in general but too I still haven't given up hope that if a vaccine-hesitant person hears or reads a point that really resonates with them their position can change and they will seek out the nearest vaccination clinic.

Maybe it can be found in your concise post about polio, COVID-19, variants and vaccines.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2021 06:28PM by Nightingale.

Feel free to start such a thread, NG. You can quote me or rework it into your own words and format.

It would be nice to get the input, additions or clarifications, from those among us who are real experts in the field.

There's also the cost. The vaccine is free — this year, at least. But what about future boosters for new variants? How many would *not* have gotten the shot this time around if they had to pay for it?

If people are charged for shots at some point, even a nominal amount, IMO the rate of vaccination is likely to drop significantly. Then, depending on the virulence of the new strains, we could rapidly find ourselves back to where we were a year ago.

But unless it somehow peters out by itself like the 1918-19 pandemic, covid is probably here to stay.

An excellent point.

I'd go further, however, and say that the cost of the vaccine and its distribution will be a major problem for the world's poorest countries. Without vaccinations, those countries will function as incubators for new variants. (I'm ignoring for the moment the fact that the US has, for political reasons, put itself in the Third World category on this score.)

A global pandemic requires a global response, and in practical terms that probably means the rich countries must finance the distribution of vaccines. It would be a small price to pay. . .

I think absolutely that first world countries need to finance vaccination efforts worldwide.

The one hope is that it's thought that the Spanish flu eventually mutated into a milder strain. However given the "cleverness" of the Covid virus in mutating into more virulent strains, that scenario doesn't seem likely anytime soon.

The ideal situation would be the emergence of a variant that is far more communicable than the other strains and yet whose symptoms are mild. That would vitiate COVID and save us all this trouble. But if the milder strain were less communicable than more virulent variants, it would die out.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2021 07:19PM by Lot's Wife.

…or… someone finds an over-the-counter remedy that prevents COVID from killing you!

Just keep trying stuff . . . Isn’t that a sort of scientific method, you know, throwing things at the wall until the spaghetti sticks?

I tried injecting spaghetti. It didn't work.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2021 07:29PM by Lot's Wife.

A couple of points:

The formula for % required for herd immunity is pretty simple (as formulas go :)

Herd immunity threshold = 1 - 1/R0

So if R0 is 5, herd immunity is 1 - 1/5 = .8 = 80%

If R0 is 8, herd immunity starts at 1 - ⅛ = .875 = 87.5%

Measles has a ferocious R0 of about 18 if I recall correctly, so herd immunity is 94.4%. Damn near everyone needs to be vaccinated to stop measles.

The hard part of figuring herd immunity is coming up with the correct value for R0 in the first place. Plus, R0 can change over time, as it has with Covid. Delta variant has a higher R0.


As for eradicating covid, I'm pretty sure that is not possible. Polio and smallpox were viruses that were so specialized to humans that they could not naturally infect any other animals. Therefore, if you can eradicate the virus in humans, job done - it's eradicated.

I think various other animals can be infected with covid. A variant may eventually arise that is both more contagious than other variants, pushing them out of the human population, and can only be caught by humans. Then it can be eradicated. In the meantime, we get to pass it back and forth between ourselves and other animals, which is part of why influenza is still around.

A couple quick points.

On R(o) and herd immunity, the more conservative experts want to build in a cushion in case the estimates are too low. The figures I presented, including the "nearly 100%" prediction, are from Osterholm, who's obviously worried that the R(o) calculations may be too optimistic. An ounce of prevention. . .

Second, I am not aware of any evidence that the COVID variants emerged from animals. It appears at first glance that the virus is surprisingly unstable within human populations. It may be that the influenza-type interaction between birds, pigs, and humans is not necessary for COVID to mutate lightning fast.

I like your reference to measles, a disease whose R(o) is too high for eradication to be practically possible. Given the problems inherent in such a large global human population, an R(o) of 10 might be too much insofar as it's impossible to get 90% of humans vaccinated. Polio, after all, is still with us. That's the worst-case scenario for COVID, and we are getting closer to it all the time.

>>Polio, after all, is still with us.

The CDC says that of the three variants of Polio, two have been eradicated. "The last evidence of wild poliovirus type 1 transmission in Nigeria was in September 2018, leaving only two polio-endemic countries (having never interrupted the transmission of indigenous wild poliovirus type 1), which are Afghanistan and Pakistan."

https://www.cdc.gov/polio/progress/index.htm

This website was linked by the CDC. It lists 39 known cases worldwide of Polio as of Sept. 2, 2021.

https://polioeradication.org/polio-today/polio-now/this-week/

Pakistan and Afghanistan are great examples of countries in which their own governments' writs do not run. There's little chance of getting control of the virus while there is so much instability there.

Measles is still with us, too, of course. BoJ puts the R(o) there at 18, which is the high range of the estimates (12-18). But if we take his number, a vaccination rate of 94% would produce herd immunity. If you take the lower calculation of 12, the required rate would be 92%. Empirically, I don't think either is achievable.

Your suggestion of a uniquely communicable but symptomatically mild variant is, I suspect, the most promising, albeit remote, possibility.

For the sake of argument, I also looked up measles, which dates back to the 10th century. At the turn of the 20th century, measles killed about 6,000 people in the U.S. per year, Per the CDC, the first effective, licensed vaccine was available in 1963. Measles was considered eliminated from the U.S. in 2000 through widespread vaccination efforts, although there have been a couple of outbreaks since.

https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html

A CDC linked website:

https://www.historyofvaccines.org/timeline/all?timeline_categories%5B%5D=51

ETA: You might very well be correct that a high vaccination rate for Covid might very well be unachievable in the current political climate. I'm starting to wonder if a more hard line approach might be required, i.e. employers requiring the vaccine for employment.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2021 07:51PM by summer.

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> [maybe harder line approach necessary] eg:employers requiring the vaccine for employment.

That's happening here in B.C. and other areas of Canada. Our provincial government has mandated vaccinations for medical staff and those who work in long term care facilities (with elderly residents).

During our current federal election campaign, two of the main parties require their candidates to be vaccinated. In one of the main parties the leader isn't requiring candidates to be vaxxed but campaign workers must be, a bit of a puzzle to me.

In B.C. our public health officer has said she would like "everyone in school settings" to be vaccinated. We'll see if that translates into mandates here. I think a majority of teachers would be in favour of this. They are one group of workers who have expressed dismay at what they perceive to be a lack of safety in public schools since the beginning, both for themselves and the students, due to old schools, lack of ventilation, overcrowding, lots of (small) portable classrooms and other issues. I sympathize with their position.

It would be a mistake to put that in the hands of employers since some employers are anti-vaxxers and would not comply; a large number of workers are off the books; and there are a lot of people (the unemployed, stay-at-home parents) who would not be covered by the mandate. And any problems in the First World would be dwarfed by those in the Third World.

With a little luck you can knock off an emerging disease if you hit it early and hard but the odds of success go down the longer you wait. We waited a long time with COVID.