cny rider

19 hours ago, TugHillMatt said:

So maddening. Stop the punishing of people... If patient is willing to RISK that increased chance, so be it. That's NOT the hospital's decision to make. The politics disgusts me.

What the hospital is doing is perfectly reasonable.

It's not the vaccinated who are politicizing this issue.

First remember the basics:  We are in the middle of a viral pandemic.

We have all been offered a vaccine that is safe, highly effective, and costs us nothing out of pocket.

Taking the vaccine lessens ones risk of severe illness and death.  It also benefits many other people, by reducing risk for the elderly and infirm and others who are not fully protected even with vaccination.

It also benefits society at large, as limiting outbreaks makes it more likely our kids are physically attending school, our businesses are open, and our hospitals are able to function.

You can spin that however you like but that's the bottom line with vaccination.

The decision not to take it calls ones judgement and decision making into question.  This is relevant when planning a highly complex medical intervention where strict adherence to a prescribed regimen, and good decision making are essential.

Second, specifically regarding the transplant:  The donor is not a big issue.  They can be screened, isolated, rechecked until the transplant team is confident they are Covid free.

The recipient is the issue.  They are going to have to have meticulous compliance with a complicated, involved post surgical care plan.

A major part of that care plan will be long term use of potent immunosuppressive medications.

So if they can't follow medical recommendations to get vaccinated before the procedure.....they are unlikely to generate an immune response even if vaccinated post procedure. They are also signaling an unwillingness to follow medical recommendations.

They then present an ongoing risk to themselves, their transplant team, and the other patients around them.

This is not unique to covid and kidney transplant.

If you want to have anti-obesity surgery you must be compliant with a prescribed medical regimen including weight loss before you will have surgery.

If you need a bone marrow transplant you have to demonstrate you can be compliant in the post-transplant period, including having a full time caregiver.  

If you cant do those things, you don't proceed.

4 hours ago, TugHillMatt said:

So I ran across this article in reference to who gets/got priority. Doesn't really seem very fair, considering "they made that choice" over people who didn't...

CDC prioritizes smokers for COVID vaccine. Health experts explain why. (usatoday.com)

Agreed!

2 hours ago, vortmax said:

No, I have not, but this isn't Ebola either. I get the fear, but we've somehow lost some confidence in our body's ability to fight infection and to ward off disease - even post-vaccine. There needs to be balance and level-headedness - even now the CDC is recommending people don't visit family for the Holidays - FULLY vaccinated people. We're suggesting boosters when we should be shipping every single extra dose to poorer countries to prevent another Delta-creating variant outbreak (like India).

The CDC are also saying viral loads for Delta are the same in vaxxed vs. unvaxxed, yet they don't explain that viral load is measured in the nose, but the primary areas of  replication, shedding, and subsequent transmission of virus are aerosols through the mouth, originating in the oropharynx, throat, and lungs (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2196-x). We should be testing Covid in the aforementioned areas via a throat swab (like strep) or saliva (which is 99% accurate) to get a more comparable idea how much viral load is in both cases.

Much of the current fear is unnecessarily generated - and not scientific, in my non-professional opinion.

We certainly agree on that CDC recommendation regarding the holidays.

Completely ridiculous and not grounded in reasonable risk/benefit analysis.

I've had 50 Thanksgivings and last year was the first I had without my mother.

It was tremendously depressing, but with no vaccines and my wife and I working in health care it was the right thing to do.

There's no way we are missing it this year.

41 minutes ago, vortmax said:

The judging is in this comment: "There is a huge difference between the unvaccinated Covid patient and all those others:  The person who chose not to get Covid vaccine, then got Covid and came to the hospital is putting my life and many others at risk with their decision." ---> It's not much different than the even more deadly SHS global issue that takes, according to WHO, 1.2M lives/year.

I'm not certain how to combat SHS globally, but in the meantime we can't be treating unvaxxed people differently than smokers - like Tug's wife was. It's just wrong and unjustified.

Honest question:  Have you ever walked into a room knowing that there was something in the room that could kill you, or the members of your family if you brought it home?

Like if you got overheated in your mask/shield/gown/gloves etc. and had a momentary lapse of judgement and wiped the sweat that was dripping down into your eyes?  Or didn't have a perfectly tight seal on your mask that you had worn for multiple days because there weren't any others, even though it was meant to be used for one day and discarded?

It was a new experience for me, for sure, around Christmas of last year.

It can make you look at things in a new light.

53 minutes ago, TugHillMatt said:

It just confuses how I couldn't possibly have gotten it from my wife considering we shared the same space for days before she showed symptoms. So, could I have had it last week, and my immune system took care of it..yielding the negative result?

It's not just the virus, the host has a large part to do with it.

Some people have Covid and even when asymptomatic shed massive quantities of virus, thereby infecting others around them.

Others shed very little virus.

Your wife is probably in the latter category.

1 minute ago, Flying MXZ said:

Wow.  Dumped out about 1.7" yesterday evening here.

It poured again here last night and we have been locked in misery mist/drizzle all day today.

Just now, TugHillMatt said:

I just went and got tested...results are negative. So, thinking my immune system and the vaccine did their job. I guess there's still time for me develop it. I've been trying to research and haven't found the right resources: Does the vaccine reduce viral load in that you could still have the virus but not display as "positive?" is there a way of predicting whether I am still at risk or not? Or is that mostly what an antibody test might help with?

If you have it, even post vaccine you should test positive.

The tests are highly sensitive, and even reduced viral load will yield a positive.

37 minutes ago, vortmax said:

 

2nd hand smoke kills 35,000/yr in the US alone, and has been killing and hurting innocent people for centuries. The World Health Organization estimates that the 1 billion individuals who smoke worldwide contribute to the 880,000 secondhand smoke (SHS)–related deaths among individuals who do not smoke each year. There certainly ARE similarities.

Edit: Just found this on the WHO website: 

Tobacco kills up to half of its users.
Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year. More than 7 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco

Let's not be so quick to judge.

That's an interesting point....but what does it have to do with judging?

What do you propose we do about that?

37 minutes ago, Luke_Mages said:

I don't completely disagree with your points but would argue that police and fire put there lives in far more danger for less compensation. 

It's a slippery slope to demand that everyone do something for the "greater good", especially when were talking about something with a 99.8% survival rate.

The survival rate does not nearly capture the impact of this virus on our society.

I am not demanding people do anything, but suggesting they should face the consequences of their decisions.

Start with higher insurance premiums, to cover their higher Covid related costs.

Continue to require evidence of vaccine or immunity to go to a concert or a Bills game, or to get on an airplane.

Stop interfering with private business decisions. Allow employers to mandate vaccination or face job loss, without vaccination.

58 minutes ago, BuffaloWeather said:

There is a lot of self induced issues that medical professionals have to deal with. People choose to do drugs, alcohol, eat badly, sedimentary lifestyle, do stupid things and go to the hospital and expect to get help. I don't see this as any different and a medical professional should not treat your wife this way. Its their job to take care of you, they get good money to do so. 

We are not mindless automatons.

There is a huge difference between the unvaccinated Covid patient and all those others:  The person who chose not to get Covid vaccine, then got Covid and came to the hospital is putting my life and many others at risk with their decision.

If I decide that driving on the left side of the road is better for me, should I be able go out in my car this afternoon and do that? Do the negative consequences for everyone else matter?

Should I ever be able to see my elderly parents for Thanksgiving again without worrying about bringing Covid to their house after taking care of the unvaccinated?

Society's needs have to come into play, and be balanced with the individual.

Is it OK for someone skip a $30 Covid vaccination and then get Regeneron antibodies for thousands of dollars at taxpayer expense?

Is it OK for the unvaccinated to make it more likely that children get shut out of school by ongoing surges in infections?  How about the effect it has on the economy?

What obligation do we all have to those with blood cancers, and organ transplants, who can't mount an effective immune response to the vaccine and remain at high risk?

We protect them when we get vaccinated and wear masks in high risk situations.

All things to think about.

2.8 inches in my gauge since it started raining Sunday afternoon.

9 hours ago, Luke_Mages said:

I wish more doctors took this approach when talking to their morbidly obese patients instead of prescribing cholesterol and blood pressure meds. 
 

I still think vax needs to be a choice. Just the way it’s a choice to allow someone to eat themselves to death or become an alcoholic or etc. Heart disease and obesity kill more people but we can’t politicize that. 

Talking to your obese patients, and prescribing cholesterol and hypertension meds are not mutually exclusive actions.

The big difference being of course that none of my smoker lung cancer patients have something transmissible that can kill me or my family members.

If people get vaccinated they are much less likely to need to come expose health care providers to a deadly virus.

The exodus of workers out of health care has just begun.

3 hours ago, matt8204 said:

Doesn't it go against the oath that the doctor took to say that he/she won't help her?  Sounds like a pretty horrible bedside manner to have, especially when someone is so sick.  What good is a mean-spirited lecture going to do at that point?  I'll say a prayer for your wife.  Hang in there.  

There's parts of the interaction that both parties could think about.

Mrs. Matt chose not to get a vaccine that is highly effective against hospitalization and death from Covid.

Now she is in the ER, and the nurses and Doctors there are literally risking their lives to take care of her, in a situation that very likely would not have happened if she had been vaccinated.

Yes, they have been vaccinated, but the vaccine isn't perfect.

Having done this for almost 2 years now, the frustration level is getting really high for some people in health care when confronted with patients who refuse to take the vaccine but expect others to continue risking their lives to provide care.

Almost everyone in health care knows colleagues who have died from this virus.

I'm not defending grumpiness or a poor bedside manner but people in health care are frustrated, exhausted and demoralized.

49 minutes ago, vortmax said:

That's not what the data shows. Out of the 77% of total US ICU beds in use, only 23% (of total) are for COVID. Only 11% (of total) for COVID in New York. 

Currently RSV appears to be overrunning the ICUs in many states. RSV has proven to be significantly worse for children than Covid, especially in the neonatal period. It's also very rough on the elderly. Moderna has received a fast-track for their RSV mRNA vaccine (mRNA-1345). They are currently recruiting for Phase 1 trials: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04528719

We SHOULD be tracking RSV ICU usage as it's a simple 5 minute test, but I don't think that fits the narrative.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33225779/

https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-utilization

ICU beds are a small fraction of the beds and healthcare provided in a hospital.

3 hours ago, TugHillMatt said:

Well, my wife's oxygen level was at 93 and she couldn't breathe so I took her to the ER.

Her vitals were fine so they didn't take her in immediately. It's been THREE HOURS and she can't breathe! She just texted me and said "I might as well die at home."

It’s unfortunate and not optimal for anyone but our health care facilities are overrun with unvaccinated people infected with COVID.

5 hours ago, TugHillMatt said:

Good point...how about mid 60s for highs and mid 40s for lows throughout the month of October? I'd be ok with that.

Absolutely, what good is it having "average weather" in late October with a high of 46F and drizzle?
 

6 minutes ago, Flying MXZ said:

I broke down and turned the heat on this morning.  But yes, the wife and kids don't need to hang around in shorts and t shirt all winter.

I also caved this morning and we ran the furnace.

I'm not ready to deal with the pellet stove yet, and we shouldn't need it after today.

4 hours ago, BuffaloWeather said:

I was under the impression that you had to prove you had a negative test within 72 hours of flying in order to board an airplane? If not they send you back until you get one. 

Yep that’s the rules.

I had my phone in hand with everyone’s certificates ready as we went through the whole airline check in and customs processing…..and nobody ever asked to see it.

19 hours ago, BuffaloWeather said:

I was shocked at how relaxed they were at checking vaccines. They didn't match anything just looked at my phone. Anyone could have taken a picture and gone to game. 

We flew back home from Iceland a month ago.

We had the antigen test done as required two days before returning to the States.  It took a lot of planning and hassle.

Nobody ever asked to see the test result.

I'm assuming (hoping) they get them from the airline or directly from the Icelandic Health service?

46 minutes ago, DeltaT13 said:

I'm surprised you even have living ash trees there still!  There isn't a single living ash tree in Monroe county unless its been treated yearly.  

We have been fortunate so far.

Big piles of maple and ash leaves, all brown, in late September.

Who has that on their tourist foliage map I wonder?

That cluster is maple and ash mix and thinning out quickly.

3 hours ago, BuffaloWeather said:

Going to lake George with my mom on Columbus Day weekend should be near peak 

I'm raking big piles of dry brown dead leaves, mainly from our maples.

I don't think they liked being so wet all summer.

These leaves never got colorful, they just shriveled up, turned brown and are now falling.

I expect the incoming windy rainstorm will take a bunch more down.

Who knows what we will see for colors in a couple of weeks but this isn't encouraging......

8 hours ago, radarman said:

Honestly, for the terrain you describe, just find some mid waist ski and you really can't go wrong.  Everyone here may have their personal preferences but IMO I'd just take the kids to the shop and ask them which ones they like and roll with it.  Having em love their gear is more important than any subtle performance differences they may note. 

Thank you.

14 hours ago, Angus said:

We get out between 6-10 times each winter for downhill.  - why not keep on renting for the kids. The adults are different? We get out between 6-10 times each winter for downhill. - given growth of kids that age, think seasonal rentals would still make sense. I would have bought my stuff over the summer sales - 

Our 14 year olds seem to have reached their full height, or close to it.

And the 12 year old, we wouldn't mind if she went through a board or two with boots over the next few years.

1 hour ago, Luke_Mages said:

These jobs (especially RNs) are extremely competitive, more likely a lot of these people will be snagged up to work out of state or remotely. From what i understand they'll be eligible for unemployment as well if they decline the vaccine.

We are facing a similar situation where I work.

We were told that being dismissed for not being vaccinated would mean no Ui benefits however.

I feel like I am watching a lot of people playing the grown up version of the game "chicken" that we used to play as kids.

I don't know who is going to swerve first.