Latest charts from the John Hopkins tracking site... per my post a few days ago, death rates showing FAR weaker correlation with Delta cases, as vaccinations AND natural immunity appear to be keeping mortality rates quite in check...
First the UK where Delta cases already appear to be falling off, without ever seeing a dramatic rise in deaths...
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US mortality levels still as low as since the virus first reached our shores, and this with the vast majority of citizens now unmasked and not cowering in fear wiping every surface with bleach, donning scuba gear in Wally World, etc...
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As for an earlier post speaking to cases of friends leading to serious health issues, I don't doubt it or question it an iota, and again, want to add that at age 53 I was pretty quick to accept the risk of the jabs.
That shared, painting the sanity of all weighing vaccination, ESPECIALLY if already having had covid and recovered, on a few anecdotal cases is a slippery path, so I’ll give my own completely anecdotal observations.
Our medical office has a very young staff -- average age of 30. To the best of our knowledge, we've had eight of twenty employees contract covid. One was completely symptomatic, getting tested without symptoms because of contact her son had with a friend with covid (both she and her son tested positive but had no symptoms). Two other employees only temporarily lost their sense of taste... that was their ONLY symptom. The other five had symptoms they described as being no worse than cold-like... sniffles along with mild and short lived coughing. No one missed work beyond the CDC return-to-work minimum guidelines, though in order to be completely transparent one employee's husband had a case he equated to the flu / was in bed a few days. Interestingly, he swore that Ivermectin turned around his case in a matter of hours, going from bedridden to up and active less than a day after taking Ivermectin. Again, an anecdotal share, so take it for what you may find it worth.
Despite having lived in three states, working with six different major corporations, and having become acquaintances with 1,000+ folks (many who've befriended me through Facebook), I only personally know two people who died from covid. One the 84 year old mother of a high school friend, who if memory serves had battled breast cancer in her recent past, as well as a 53 year old male classmate... but one who was truly morbidly obese, had severe diabetes, and who tragically acknowledged he'd put himself at dramatically increased risk. I don't know of a single contact suffering from any significant long-term covid issues. And that's sure NOT to say that a subset of the population does, but I've yet to meet one / know one, and our medical practice, while admittedly a NON-covid field (dermatology) has approximately 25,000 patient visits scheduled per year and with MANY of those including quite old patients. The patients we've discovered died from covid were mostly 70+, and we've been pleasantly surprised to have a surprising number of patients 80 and even in their 90s who fought covid without suffering significant symptoms. Frame all this against the original government request that citizens sacrifice freedoms only for a few weeks to "flatten the curve" at a time when mortality was believed to be 6%... and yet here we are, approaching two years later, with mortality now clearly identified as far, FAR lower, risks to grade school children extremely low... and we not only have some gov officials wanting to put draconian measures back in place, but a fair number STILL pushing for schools not to offer on-site classes, and / or pushing to make kids get vaccinated, and EVEN THEN make the poor kids MASK EVEN AFTER THEY GET VACCINATED.
Do any of my anecdotal observations above lead me to feel justified in screaming for folks not to CHOOSE to get vaccinated? Absolutely NOT. But does it, along with SIGNIFICANT HARD DATA linking outcomes to other health comorbidities AND AGE, give me pause to scream that EVERYONE, including children AND adults who now have natural immunity MUST be vaccinated (despite now well-documented vaccine risks for the young)? 100% yes, again with the anecdotal share that my daughter's school had on-site classes with about 80% opting to attend on-site, with minimal cases and with zero severe cases to my knowledge (and trust me, word would have gotten around had their been even one serious case).
Until/unless a variant develops that actually lifts mortality rates, I personally feel that a consequence of living in a FREE society, where again liability has been COMPLETELEY waived for DEEP POCKET CORPORATIONS via "emergency use authorization" leaving NO ONE with ANY recourse regarding negative vaccine side-effects, even among our children, I think it's completely prudent to let the chips fall where they may for now, with it pretty clear that the vaccines ALONG WITH NATURAL IMMUNITY AMONG THOSE ALREADY INFECTED are, per the data-driven charts above, keeping deaths at extremely low rates relative to rates a year ago and this with ALL identified variants to date.
Someone older with major comorbidities decides not to get jabbed? They're rolling the dice just as they might if a heavy smoker or drinker, which last I checked the dems still haven't risked trying to stop via nanny actions. But, frankly, for those in their 20s and under, rolling the dice for them is a far different equation and I DO understand their desires to let some time pass to ensure that jabs not yet passing typical years of vaccine testing prove to be relatively safe for their age group relative to their far lower risks of serious disease (as well as waiting to the date that corporations might actually be liable for negative outcomes).
And with that, dang tired of typing... and imagine those who've stayed with me are just (or more!) tired of reading!
One last post-script (promise)... in regards to Roymunson saying how lucky I am to have married a sugar mama, I'm blessed to feel I got a trophy wife too! Ashamed to admit she works out far more regularly than I do, and with us in our early 50s she's actually more fit than she was at 16 when we first dated. Shared picture of her was taken just a few years back as she was approaching 50
I lied... post-script to the post-script... this last paragraph likely will disappear PDQ, lest I risk her seeing it and killing me.
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