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Covid-19 #38: As the Worm Turns


Fragile Bird

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Worms continue to be a hot topic!

I have seen stories about pharmacies and farm supply stores across the country (Canada) getting more inquiries about ivermectin, but I haven’t seen any stories yet about poisoned people showing up at hospitals. Keeping my fingers crossed it doesn’t happen here.

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More states are turning red, to dark red, on their way to purple, indicating the overwhelming numbers of new covid cases and hospitalizations.  It's just -- well, how long can our city's numbers stay down enough that the hospitals don't break as they are in so many other states?

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First time vaccinations in Alberta are ticking up a bit, and this is before the $100 bribe was announced. Though I'm not sure our glorious premiere has thought this through. There are ~800K unvaccinated 12+ Albertans. If a significant number of them decide to get the jab in the next month, it'll cost upwards of half a billion dollars! All because he couldn't piss off his base by telling people to get vaccinated. 

Once the vaccines were available to all ages, he and his cronies should have been going on TV every day and scaring the shit out of people. Instead they declared "game on" and announced a complete relaxation of restrictions was coming. These idiots were not on the ball at all.

At least We're not Florida or Texas. Desantis is completely insane. 

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2 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

First time vaccinations in Alberta are ticking up a bit, and this is before the $100 bribe was announced. Though I'm not sure our glorious premiere has thought this through. There are ~800K unvaccinated 12+ Albertans. If a significant number of them decide to get the jab in the next month, it'll cost upwards of half a billion dollars! All because he couldn't piss off his base by telling people to get vaccinated. 

How do you figure that? Even if all 800K people get paid $100, that only amounts to $80M.

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Yeah well once you add in the cost of acquiring the shots, the salaries of those actually injecting them, the salaries of their supervisors, the work lost due to side effects and appointments for the shots themselves, the cost of administering a province wide program, probably the advertising budget for telling people about this program, and if Alberta works anything like the USA, at least 10% for the Big Guy, you're probably approaching half a billion.

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So if half a billion is already baked in, then another $80M is not really worth quibbling over.

Govts should pay families the lost earnings for people who get sick for the period they are sick and not covered by sick leave on full pay, and they should be forced to pay the loss in future lifetime earnings for the people who died*. Might make the $100 bribe to be vaccinated seem less of a burden on the state.

 

*though not those who had the opportunity to be vaxxed and chose not to.

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1 hour ago, mcbigski said:

Yeah well once you add in the cost of acquiring the shots, the salaries of those actually injecting them, the salaries of their supervisors, the work lost due to side effects and appointments for the shots themselves, the cost of administering a province wide program, probably the advertising budget for telling people about this program, and if Alberta works anything like the USA, at least 10% for the Big Guy, you're probably approaching half a billion.

According to the Alberta health website, they had 6.8 million doses delivered compared to 5.6 million doses administered. So they already have the shots. Allowing for the the Astra Zeneca or expired doses they didn't use (which probably informed the October 14 cut-off for the $100 bribe), there's got to be close to a million unused doses in this province right now. 

Planning!

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45 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Whole there is all that, apparently, the cost of a covid stay in the hospital is an average of $40k per person. That’s significantly more expensive than handing out a $100 bribe.

Yup. And to be clear, if the bribe motivates a few thousand people to get of their asses and get poked, I'm all for it. Even if they are idiots.

My point is that our provincial leadership has never taken the opportunity to get ahead of this thing. Like back in July when they announced there was going to be a complete relaxation of Covid protocols at the end of August (didn't happen). Or last fall when people were screaming at our premiere to institute a lockdown and he refused to do it, all while asking the federal government for red cross emergency hospitals because actual hospitals were being overrun. We ended up locking down just in time for Christmas. Better late than never. 

You'd think after 18 months the "wait and see" approach would be thoroughly discredited by now.  

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20 cases per day for the last 3 days. With decreasing testing rate each day. Means the positivity rate for the testing is increasing. Not necessarily a bad thing, since it could mean better targeting of testing. However it could also be not good if the targeting of testing is not picking up populations that are at a higher risk. Only half of the tests done in the relevant 24 hrs were in Auckland. So that makes the positivity rate in the place where there are still infections happening on a daily basis is even higher.

Five cases from yesterday were infectious in the community. This means five more opportunities for the cases to balloon again in the next 3-7 days.

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1 hour ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Whole there is all that, apparently, the cost of a covid stay in the hospital is an average of $40k per person. That’s significantly more expensive than handing out a $100 bribe.

Is a $100 bribe going to motivate that many people to get vaxxed though? If it does I have to think even less of the holdouts than I already do.

Make it $5,000, paid out over the course of 5 years, and tie it with strict vaccine passports. Those who still opt out can go fuck themselves and be treated like lepers. And falsifying a passport comes with 10 years jail time. 

ETA: With a carve out for those doctors legitimately think should wait. No religious exemptions. 

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16 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Is a $100 bribe going to motivate that many people to get vaxxed though? If it does I have to think even less of the holdouts than I already do.

Make it $5,000, paid out over the course of 5 years, and tie it with strict vaccine passports. Those who still opt out can go fuck themselves and be treated like lepers. And falsifying a passport comes with 10 years jail time. 

ETA: With a carve out for those doctors legitimately think should wait. No religious exemptions. 

We'll see. According to the Alberta Health Website, we've been averaging about 6-8k doses per day for the last month or so, excluding weekends. It's difficult to say because their graph doesn't show moving averages. About 1/3 to 1/2 of those have been first doses. If those numbers rise visibly in the next month, well see it. If we could maintain that number over 10k/day until the bribe window expires, I'd call that a success. 20k/day would be a miracle.

I think it also depends on the age cohort and economic status. A college student who hasn't gotten around to getting poked yet might see that $100 as an adequate sweetener. And yes, in this province the age cohort with the lowest vaccination rate is 20-29. Generally, people under 50 need to get off their asses.

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I would say for front-line health, law enforcement and border workers COVID-19 vaccination should be a condition of employment. Don't like it, get a different job.

If 20% of ambulance crew refuse a vaccination, and the state as a whole manages >80% vaccination (in the eligible population) then that means ambulence workers are bigger numpties than the general population. That isn't very encouraging for the intellectual competency of ambulance crew.

The latest report (dated 5 Sept) says 73% of our eligible population has either had their first dose or have booked in (100% voluntary to book a vaccination) their first jab. 61% of the eligible population has had their first jab. And we have finally ticked over 50% of the total population having had a first jab. I will be happy when the total+booked for first jabbed goes over 80%.

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27 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I think it also depends on the age cohort and economic status. A college student who hasn't gotten around to getting poked yet might see that $100 as an adequate sweetener. And yes, in this province the age cohort with the lowest vaccination rate is 20-29. Generally, people under 50 need to get off their asses.

I just think it says a lot about you if a $100 bribe is what makes you get the shot.

And all employment should require being vaccinated with the one legitimate health exception. Full stop.

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2 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Whole there is all that, apparently, the cost of a covid stay in the hospital is an average of $40k per person. That’s significantly more expensive than handing out a $100 bribe.

What's the hospitalization rate?  If 1% need hospitalization, then that's about $400 per head.  If it's more like .1%, then the math goes towards the other conclusion.  And that's without all the other bullshit padding that goes into most govt spending.  And the external costs of lockdowns, maskings, etc.

If vaccines work reasonably well, then why aren't we back to living like 2018 flu season?  Not a shot at you specifcally M, but if anyone doesnt agree, show your work.

At this point, being both a covid survivor and vaccinated, I think that telling civilians to rewear the same old cloth mask only makes some people question authority even more, and some people even more fearful.  

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24 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

If vaccines work reasonably well, then why aren't we back to living like 2018 flu season? 

Work shown: 
1) Not enough people have been vaccinated/are taking social measures like masking seriously to prevent spread at this point therefore:

2) Our hospitals and ICUs are full, as are many other states.

It’s not difficult.

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1 hour ago, mcbigski said:

What's the hospitalization rate?  If 1% need hospitalization, then that's about $400 per head.

Considering that the current global mortality rate from Covid is 2.1%, I'm guessing the hospitalization rate is higher. And once the hospitals are maxed out, you could start to see mortality rates in the low double digits. That's what happened in Northern Italy last spring and Spain last summer. What do you do when you have one ventilator and 10 patients that need it? Build nine coffins. 

Your number also doesn't include the loss in productivity. i.e. people not sick enough to go to the hospital but sick enough to stay home for a number of days and miss work. 

46 minutes ago, VigoTheCarpathian said:

Work shown: 
1) Not enough people have been vaccinated/are taking social measures like masking seriously to prevent spread at this point therefore:

2) Our hospitals and ICUs are full, as are many other states.

It’s not difficult.

I'm already reading stories about people who don't have Covid but are dying because of stuffed hospitals and ICU's

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I just think it says a lot about you if a $100 bribe is what makes you get the shot.

It says that maybe the government of this province is finally taking this seriously enough to be proactive about it. It says, "you're a fucking asshole" (to the meat sack getting the shot). Personally, I think our Premier needs to start scaring the shit out of people. Not that he'll have my vote in 2023 but whatevs. 

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1 hour ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

 

I'm already reading stories about people who don't have Covid but are dying because of stuffed hospitals and ICU's

That might sound callous but the effect the current wave has on some US states is a good warning for other governments that the pandemic is not over and that measures should be taken.

The Austrian government is already changing its stance for example and started talking about more severe measures again. The German government will follow suit after the election I suspect.

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