Coronavirus and You - Page 314

On December 22 2020 03:35 cLutZ wrote:


Perhaps, or perhaps Norwegian ex pats in the US and Canada are also doing quite well.

On December 22 2020 05:11 Nevuk wrote:

...are they? This is a ludicrous thing to throw out without backing evidence.

The ONLY reason along these lines that I've seen credible people attribute to Norway suffering less than say, Spain, is that they have vitamin D supplemented in their food by government mandate.

On December 22 2020 05:36 Danglars wrote:

Milton Friedman quoted it circa sixty years ago. Back then, as today, Nordic ideals were quoted as successes America should emulate. The answer to “Scandinavian countries have no poverty” was “In America, among Scandinavians, there is also no poverty.”

On December 22 2020 05:47 Nevuk wrote:

I'm sorry, I don't understand your point. What does that have to do with COVID? (and as others have pointed out, Sweden isn't doing so hot and is scandinavian).

On December 22 2020 05:02 cLutZ wrote:
It could be genetic or cultural. The point is they have different outcomes regardless of the country they live in, and its not just true of that ethnicity, almost all ethnicities have varying performances that are sticky when those people migrate from country to country. This is true of just about every social problem we have studied in the past, from educational outcomes, income, crime, etc. The BOP is on someone saying that this new social malady is different.

On December 22 2020 05:11 Nevuk wrote:

...are they? This is a ludicrous thing to throw out without backing evidence.

The ONLY reason along these lines that I've seen credible people attribute to Norway suffering less than say, Spain, is that they have vitamin D supplemented in their food by government mandate.

“To me the issue of ethics is very significant, very important for this country,” Dr. Peter Szilagyi, a committee member and a pediatrics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said at the time, “and clearly favors the essential worker group because of the high proportion of minority, low-income and low-education workers among essential workers.”

That position runs counter to frameworks proposed by the World Health Organization, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and many countries, which say that reducing deaths should be the unequivocal priority and that older and sicker people should thus go before the workers, a view shared by many in public health and medicine.

Marc Lipsitch, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, argued that teachers should not be included as essential workers, if a central goal of the committee is to reduce health inequities.

“Teachers have middle-class salaries, are very often white, and they have college degrees,” he said. “Of course they should be treated better, but they are not among the most mistreated of workers.”

Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, disagreed. Teachers not only ensure that children don’t fall further behind in their education, she said, but are also critical to the work force at large.

When you talk about disproportionate impact and you’re concerned about people getting back into the labor force, many are mothers, and they will have a harder time if their children don’t have a reliable place to go,” she said. “And if you think generally about people who have jobs where they can’t telework, they are disproportionately Black and brown. They’ll have more of a challenge when child care is an issue.”

Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said that it is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults, given their risks, and that they are disproportionately minorities. “Older populations are whiter, ” Dr. Schmidt said. “Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.”

On December 22 2020 07:18 JimmiC wrote:

Unless you have some data that Scandinavians are doing better with Covid in the US and Canada this is one of the biggest and dumbest jumps you have made. Back it up with some evidence, I know you prefer feelings to facts, but if you are trying to say that because Scandinavians at one point (unsourced) did better in the US economically therefor it is possible that they are going to be more resistant to Covid generically, come on.

Not yet. ICU and emerg and long-term care get them first so I'm gonna guess sometimes in Feb for us?

On December 22 2020 08:00 Sadist wrote:
Isnt the point of giving the vaccine to healthcare workers first also that they would be less likely to spread it multiple patients? Or is a situation like that pretty much solved now?

On December 22 2020 07:03 Gorsameth wrote:
The US is still in a full bloom pandemic. Hospitals are full and the thanksgiving peak is only just starting with a likely Christmas peak to follow.

Giving it to hospital personal over the elderly makes 100% sense without having to bring ethnicity into it.

On December 22 2020 08:46 pmh wrote:


Possibly but as far as i know it has not been proven yet that the vaccine makes it impossible to spread the disease.
The most important reason is to keep the healthcare system functioning. Doctors and nurses who are sick cant work,the system could collapse if to many of them would get ill.

On December 22 2020 08:00 Sadist wrote:
Isnt the point of giving the vaccine to healthcare workers first also that they would be less likely to spread it multiple patients? Or is a situation like that pretty much solved now?

Not having enough people working to triage and actually work towards saving patients crushes a healthcare system, especially if you don't have enough people for good continuity of care. A lot of places have had nurses/doctors working 7 days a week, 12-14 hours a day with far higher patient:nurse ratios than under normal conditions. If someone drops out, there is literally no way to replace them.

On December 22 2020 09:13 m4ini wrote:


If the vaccine works as it's supposed to, it won't prevent the spreading of the virus - it prevents the virus from attacking you. There's no definitive answer, but chances are that you can spread it just as easily.

In regards to something that i initially thought was a no-brainer..

Give it to old people first. Not because of moral reasons, but one simple thing. If you vaccinate the health staff first, and something unforeseen goes wrong - which is entirely possible considering it's the first vaccine of its kind..

It sounds mean, but i'd rather see the vaccine going wrong in old people, than in our main line of defence. Hospitals everywhere getting stretched for resources, you can't afford single nurses/doctors falling ill, let alone all, half, or a quarter of them due to unforeseen consequences.

I'm a bit torn on that one.



Correct.

The reality is though that health staff with enough resources doesn't get infected, or at least very rarely gets infected (was different early in the pandemic). I'd argue that for a well trained/equipped nurse/doc, the chances of infection are close to nil - whereas the vaccine is the great unknown.

Sidenote, i don't argue against the vaccine. I just don't think anymore that the health staff getting it first is the absolute correct step.