The Liberal Gun Club Forum

K9s wrote: Fri Apr 10, 2020 12:47 pm

TrueTexan wrote: Fri Apr 10, 2020 11:58 am Even with the vaccine we won't achieve much due to the anti-vaxeers. Justice those that don't take the flu shots each year because "I never get the flu".

Anti-vaxxers may have a clash with reality and Darwinism in the next few years. The ones who survive will tout their survival as proof they were right and the rest will die. Will they get a religious exemption or something for the "proof of antibodies" certifications? Will they just work from home selling things online and spread fake stories?

A recent online survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults, conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of the American Osteopathic Association [DO physicians], revealed that more than 2 in 5 American adults (45 percent) say something has caused them to doubt vaccine safety.

She believes it is possible that, since vaccines have been so effective in eradicating disease, people may have more fear of possible vaccine side effects than the actual diseases vaccines prevent.
"For some, it really might be that vaccines are viewed as the more salient threat," says Shmuts.

The survey also asked Americans to choose a statement that best represented their feelings about vaccine safety and efficacy. While the vast majority (82 percent) chose in favor of vaccines, 8 percent selected responses expressing serious doubt. An additional 9 percent said they were unsure. Physicians say those small margins can cause significant damage to public health if the doubts result in more unvaccinated people.

"Some diseases, like measles, require as much as 95 percent of the population to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity," says osteopathic family physician Paul Ehrmann, DO. "Our practice considers itself a steward of public health, so we do not take new patients who refuse to vaccinate."

Ehrmann explains that herd immunity is essential to maintain, because some people cannot be vaccinated due to medical conditions including allergies, illness, or a weakened immune system. Keeping the rest of the population vaccinated protects those who are vulnerable.

Can I Require My Employees to Get Vaccinated?

In short, the answer is generally yes, you can condition employment on vaccination. Even the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — the agency responsible for enforcing the nation's Federal anti-discrimination laws — concedes this.

But there are limitations: The anti-discrimination laws prohibit you from requiring vaccinations of those employees objecting on religious grounds or because of a disability (and some state laws even permit employee refusal on "philosophical" grounds).

In these cases, you must reasonably accommodate the employee (e.g. allow them to wear a surgical mask), unless that accommodation would cause undue hardship or if it would pose a direct threat to public safety. In such a case you can discipline them, including terminating their employment for failing to vaccinate.

Further, labor laws may require you to collectively bargain with unionized employees before you have the right to impose this vaccination requirement on them. A related question employers often ask is whether they can ask their employees for vaccination records, or more simply, whether they've been vaccinated. Again, the answer is yes, but be careful.

Employers will have a legal obligation to keep this information confidential, including by maintaining it in a separate file and disclosing it on a need-to-know basis only or as required by law. They have a similar obligation if the employee discloses a disability in response to the vaccination query. Further, while the law generally does not mandate the disclosure of vaccination records to an employer, a health care provider cannot and will not disclose vaccination records to an employer without first receiving the employee's written authorization. Employers cannot force an employee to sign one, but it can make it a condition of employment.

K9s wrote:I heard a clip of Dr Birx saying that the logarithmic curve is starting to flatten... and I was horrified that people will read that as "problem solved!" because most people have no idea what that means.

How long can a nation of 327 million people endure with work and schools closed, lost jobs, and people still dying from a pandemic with no proven treatment?

...the Imperial College London report from mid-March, which predicted 2.2 million deaths in the US without social distancing measures — a finding that triggered lockdowns on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean — projected a first round of shutdowns could last five months. The university’s modelers suggested that, after a couple of months off, social distancing might then need to pick up again on Sept. 20.

“We are probably looking at five- to six-month phases, done in different ways and times in different places across the country,” pandemic expert Irwin Redlener of the Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health told BuzzFeed News. “Putting people through that process will be extremely difficult.” A recent spate of think tank reports and scientific presentations expand the Imperial College scientists’ vision, suggesting that cities, counties, and towns will need to enact public health lockdowns of varying lengths, with stops and starts based on if and when coronavirus cases hint at rising again.

Lipsitch suggested that cycles of turning social distancing restrictions on and off could also be triggered by hospital capacity in a city or state, with loosening happening when hospitalizations fall to 0.2 per 10,000 people and turned back on again when they reach 0.75 per 10,000 people.

This threshold rests on the nationwide average of empty ICU beds, around 0.9 per 10,000 people, but that number varies widely across the country; some rural counties having zero critical care beds. Doubling ICU beds across the country is one measure that would allow for longer pauses between restarts of tighter restrictions.

Other experts have suggested we might see the establishment of a waiting room approach to daily life. Testing could be required before entering the grocery store or other essential businesses, especially if rapid tests become widespread, Baylor molecular virologist Joseph Petrosino told BuzzFeed News. “You pull into the parking lot, and a drive-through testing center takes a sample. And then you wait in the car with your phone until you are cleared to work,” he said.

Such testing would start with health care workers, and then expand as capacity increases. For this to work, we will need to develop a widely available, nationwide genetic test for the active presence of the virus, something still missing from the US response. South Korea has pioneered this sort of approach, with widespread testing allowing better control of its outbreak, at least so far.

Much of Europe is still on coronavirus lockdown, with severe restrictions on movement and penalties for those who transgress. But not Sweden. Restaurants and bars are open in the Nordic country, playgrounds and schools too, and the government is relying on voluntary action to stem the spread of Covid-19.

But the Swedish government is confident its policy can work. Foreign Minister Ann Linde told Swedish TV on Wednesday that Trump was "factually wrong" to suggest that Sweden was following the "herd immunity" theory -- of letting enough people catch the virus while protecting the vulnerable, meaning a country's population builds up immunity against the disease.

Sweden's strategy, she said, was: "No lockdown and we rely very much on people taking responsibility themselves." The country's state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, also pushed back against Trump's criticism that Sweden was doing badly. "I think Sweden is doing okay," he told CNN affiliate Expressen. "It's producing quality results the same way it's always done. So far Swedish health care is handling this pandemic in a fantastic way."

Sweden's actions are about encouraging and recommending, not compulsion. Two days after Spain imposed a nationwide lockdown on March 14, Swedish authorities were encouraging people to wash hands and stay at home if sick. On March 24, new rules were introduced to avoid crowding at restaurants. But they very much stayed open. So did many primary and secondary schools. Gatherings of up to 50 people are still permitted.

Much of Sweden's focus has been to protect the elderly. Anyone aged 70 or older has been told to stay at home and limit their social contact as much as possible. One Swedish government official said that on the whole people supported the government's approach, but many were "upset about the fact that no ban on visiting homes for elderly was set until recently [April 1], and now the virus is widely spread among these homes, causing the death toll to rise."

As for deaths, by April 8, coronavirus accounted for 67 fatalities per 1 million Swedish citizens, according to the Swedish Health Ministry. Norway had 19 deaths per million, Finland seven per million. The number of deaths rose 16% on Wednesday.

Some Swedish researchers are demanding the government must be stricter. This week several prominent Swedish clinicians wrote an open letter lamenting that large numbers of people are visiting bars, restaurants and shopping malls, even ski slopes. "This unfortunately is translating into a death toll that continues to climb in Sweden."

Some opponents of the government's policy fear that reliance on voluntary behavior will cause a much faster spike in cases, potentially overwhelming the health care system. Sweden also has one of the lowest ratios of critical care beds per capita in Europe, and the government official who spoke with CNN said that supplies of protective equipment are only just staying ahead of demand. In some ways, however, Sweden is better prepared to weather the storm than other countries. Some 40% of the country's workforce worked from home regularly, even before the virus struck and Sweden has a high ratio of people living on their own, whereas in southern Europe it's not uncommon to have three generations under one roof.

Emma Grossmith, a British employment lawyer working in Stockholm, says another factor in Sweden's favor is a generous social welfare net that means people don't feel obligated to turn up for work if their young child is sick. State support kicks in on day one of absence from work due to a child being sick. "The system here was already well set up to help people to make smarter choices which ultimately benefit the wider population," she told CNN.

The next month will determine whether the Swedish system got it right.

lurker wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 9:27 am a big source of ambiguity in this situation is the lag between our measures and the virus' response. without universal testing in real time, if it takes two or three weeks for new cases to show up at the ICU, it' going to be unclear whether any specific action is having the desired effect. same thing with the mortality rate. it takes longer to recover than to die, so we don't really know what the actual mortality rate is. i'm sure the numbers and dates are out there somewhere, but not very accessible to us.

featureless wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 10:15 am Good points. We won't be open by the end of April, that's for sure.

My aunt was admitted to the hospital last night. Still no test, but she's got the symptoms. She lives alone and her oxygen had dropped to 93 and temp was 103. My cousins can't care take for risk of exposure of themselves and families, so ER it is.

“When this started, the private sector basically shut the economy down before Trump told them to,” said Justin Wolfers, an professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan. “It turned out that what the federal government did was not very relevant — the government can’t force you to take risks you don’t want to take,” he added. “It couldn’t on the way down and it also can’t on the way up.”

Administration officials concede that even their most optimistic plans would not open the entire country at once. And while corporate leaders are eager to reopen, polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans accept the restrictions because they appear to be working.

“Some places will be able to think about opening on May 1, most of the country will not, to be honest with you,” Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Fox News on Friday. “That’s how we’ll reopen the country. Place by place, bit by bit, based on the data.”

New York City, the nation’s economic capital and the area hit hardest by the pandemic, is expected to stay under a virtual shutdown until at least June 1, Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, told a news conference Thursday.

Newsom, a Democrat, has declared that California will chart its own course, relying less on the White House and leveraging its considerable economic power as “a nation-state.” Newsom was the first governor to issue a formal stay-at-home order, on March 19, a step credited with preventing the type of spread that overwhelmed New York. Los Angeles County officials on Friday extended stay-at-home orders through at least May 15.

Governors in 42 states, comprising the vast majority of the U.S. population, have issued stay-at-home orders. Mayors in some of the other eight states issued their own restrictions.

kronkmusic wrote: Fri Apr 10, 2020 9:13 pm Looks like JHU revised some recent numbers and it's not good. Edit: numbers seem to be in flux but the graph still looks bad, and anyone who is saying that we're "over the hump" needs to be shut up and/or ignored.

Stiff wrote:

kronkmusic wrote: Fri Apr 10, 2020 9:13 pm Looks like JHU revised some recent numbers and it's not good. Edit: numbers seem to be in flux but the graph still looks bad, and anyone who is saying that we're "over the hump" needs to be shut up and/or ignored.

I think New York is stabilizing, but other states that are late with their stay home order is catching up. I think several states don’t even have a mandatory stay home order, just an advisory.

featureless wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 12:04 pm Thanks, lurker.

This pandemic is showing the vast weaknesses in our systems, care for profit being one of them.

lurker wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2020 4:42 pm so much winning, are we tired of winning yet?