Local media outlets are reporting that the city of Boston is asking Provincetown visitors to isolate and get a COVID-19 test.
From the piece (emphasis mine):
Boston health officials on Tuesday urged recent visitors to Provincetown to self-isolate and get tested for COVID-19 after a cluster of cases was linked to the popular Cape Cod tourist town.
At least 35 cases of COVID-19 in Boston have been traced to Provincetown, with the vast majority of cases involving people who were fully vaccinated, according to the Boston Public Health Commission.
In a related piece from yesterday (linked from the above), 80 fully vaccinated Massachusetts residents have died from COVID-19 and the number of “breakthrough cases” in Massachusetts now exceeds 5,000.
From the second piece (emphasis mine):
As of July 17, 716 more fully vaccinated residents had tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the number of breakthrough cases statewide to 5,166, numbers released by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health indicate. There were 4,450 breakthrough cases reported last week.
Fifty-seven fully vaccinated residents were hospitalized and later died from the virus, while 23 others who were vaccinated died without going to the hospital.
A total of 272 fully vaccinated people have been hospitalized after becoming infected.
It dangerously incorrect to maintain that the pandemic is over or that “the chances of one getting it [are] low and the chances of it being severe/deadly [are] tiny”.
I recognize my own quote when I see it and I stand by it as a matter of statistical probability. What I don’t understand is why Cape/Islands vaccination rates are so low. I assume access is not an issue. Also, we are once again focusing on the outliers which has exactly the effect I was afraid of which is making people scared. Percentage wise almost all of the deadly cases are among the unvaccinated and the overwhelming number of breakthrough cases are still of mitigated severity.
I assume you prefer an unattributed quote. I’m happy to edit the thread-starter if you prefer.
The year-round population of Provincetown is about 3,000 (according to Wikipedia). The in-season population is about 60,000 according to the same source.
Using the larger 60K figure, the 57 breakthrough cases from Provincetown is a rate of 58.33 cases per 100K population. That’s more than six times the MA goal of 8 cases per 100K population “R0” target. The published data does include the time period covered for those cases.
The point of this post is that there have been 80 deaths among fully-vaccinated people.
What do you mean by “mitigated severity”? The second link says that 272 of the breakthrough cases were hospitalized.
How many fully-vaccinated people have to get sick and die in order for you to admit
that this threat is real and significant? How many people are you willing to infect by refusing to wear a mask?
At the moment, only Provincetown is a concern for masking and social distancing. My concern is those, like you, who appear to prioritize their own feelings above the relevant science and data.
A HUGE reason why we rely on science and data is that our feelings and opinions are so often incorrect.
“Stop pleading with anti-vaxxers and start mandating vaccinations” is the headline from Max Boot’s Washington Post column today.
I won’t answer “how many” questions. There’s no good specific answer, but also no absolute guarantees in life. Vaccines are not and likely never will be perfect. I don’t believe they are for other diseases either. Do you suggest shutting down forever? By mitigated severity it was my understanding that those who are vaccinated generally have less severe symptoms than they might have had they not been vaccinated. Not sure where that leaves the 272 still hospitalized anyway though I suspect they have factors that make them more vulnerable. I believe there is more to life than robotic deference to science and that other values are important. I don’t believe that my arithmetic or concerns about such things as the constitution and quality of life are a mere matter of feelings. I have no objection to your quoting me with or without attribution, but since you did I will continue to argue why I stand by it.
ANY public health policy that attempts to mitigate ANY risk MUST focus on the outliers.
Most people who are exposed to second-hand cigarette smoke suffer no measurable harm. Most people who are exposed to PCBs or similar toxins suffer no measurable harm.
“Only” twenty percent of Asbestos workers suffered from Asbestosis, and only 2-10% suffer from Mesothelioma. By your standards, we should not have bothered stopping the use of Asbestos.
After all, why should we pay any attention to the “outliers”? After all, they’re only tiny percentage of the population. Most Americans don’t work with asbestos. The risk of living in a house with asbestos shingles on the outside is tiny. Surely it was an unconstitutional infringement on our rights and on the free market to stop the sale and installation of asbestos-containing construction materials.
We appear to be headed towards another surge of COVID — driven by those who view vaccinations, masking, social distancing, and lockdowns (where needed) as unconstitutional infringements on our freedom.
Twenty percent is a fair bit higher than 2% and if there is a healthier product why not use it? Your constitutional argument is silly and I don’t recall shutting down society when a structure is found to have asbestos. There’s no constitutional right to light up a cigarette either, but I would argue it’s a basic human right to be able to breathe without worrying about inhaling it.
It’s all about relative cost-benefits and how extreme disruption is. I’ve certainly never said that public health should not be mitigated or certain precautions not taken. My argument has been that the strategies we have employed violate certain principles and are much more extreme than necessary.
I don’t see how masking and social distancing requirements are a massive infringement on civil liberties, especially when things like worship services, government meetings, and schooling can be conducted online. A poor substitute for in person for sure, but the argument this entire time has been accept more pain up front to avoid even more pain down the road.
Our grandparents generation went through rationing, our parents generation went through wage and price controls and the draft, these things are far more coercive than a mask or social distancing mandate and were perfectly constitutional.
I can concede that the initial harsh lockdowns were not as effective as the latter mask and social distance mandate, but in the early stages of the pandemic they were prudent judgments based on the knowledge at the time.
The states that hastily reopened and unmasked first caused super spreading events last year. Brazil and even vaunted Sweden had far more deaths per capita than even we did because their herd immunity experiments failed. The same states are largely unvaccinated and responsible for the Delta surge now.
We have so much to lose if we don’t maintain our vigilance. So I think reimposing an indoor mask mandate is going to be appropriate soon and I’ll start voluntarily wearing mine again. I also think mandating vaccines and masks students and school employees has to happen to make in person possible in the fall. I will fight my union if we resist that mandate. I also refuse to go back to remote, so I hope we can beat back this virus before it surges again. Think of my RN wife and my elderly parents as well as those of us working in schools.
I got vaccinated on March 9 yet I mask up and socially distance every time I leave the house.
If we had started with masks while preferably not otherwise cancelling our lives I might have been more tolerant, but when we did get around to it it felt like piling on the fear and that we were basically asked to hide from each other. I think they are just as valid legally as helmet and seatbelt laws, but the way a government like ours is supposed to work they should have been legislated like the other two rather than imposed by executive fiat. I favor vaccination requirements for schools and hope we can get them approved for as young as 5 years soon. I do not like not knowing automatically leading to worst case assumptions. Banning gatherings are the height of constitutional violation, particularly where free exercise is also involved. Not allowing folks to come together in a public space for worship is EXACTLY what the founding generation had in mind. Being relegated to worshipping in our own homes is just what dissenters in Europe had to resort to before some of them made it to this side of the Atlantic. It doesn’t make a difference that all religious traditions were equally affected this time. I don’t think the internet, as great a tool as it is, should be used as an excuse to fudge the Constitution. FWIW I have questioned the constitutionality of the draft. A case could be made that it violates the 13th amendment’s prohibition of involuntary servitude. Even without that specific clause it seems a free government would have a very high burden to require its citizens to risk their lives. At the end of the day there is simply no excuse IMO in a 21st century free society for a virus that’s flying around to impact anyone but the medical community, policy makers, those who do get sick, and their loved ones.
Unfortunately viruses don’t follow the Constitution and those of us married to health care workers, living with vulnerable elderly parents, and working in a community where 1 in 3 residents did get sick it’s a different consideration. In all honesty my wife is looking to get out of bedside nursing a lot sooner than she wanted to since this pandemic has taken a huge toll on her mental health, it’s honestly like I’m living with a veteran with PTSD sometimes.
So I really hope we can get out of this and at the end of the day, we are a nation that sacrificed freedom for collective welfare before and we can do so again. I think the conservative argument you are making is assuming a malicious intent on the part of the government or an arbitrary intent rather than a legitimate public health concern.
We gave up far more freedom for the statistically less significant risks associated with terrorism and to avenge an attack that ultimately killed a small fraction of the people killed by Covid. You can downplay the numbers of deaths all you want, as Trump tried to, but each of those deaths had a name and a family and a story that ended sooner than it had to because too many of our policy makers and citizens are selfish.
I absolutely do not assume malicious or arbitrary intent. I have said all along that I am happy to assume good faith. However, for these protections to be truly meaningful they must be defended in those circumstances too. It’s the same reason that the only way to protect the innocent in our criminal justice system is to ensure that even the most obviously guilty of the most heinous of crimes is afforded a vigorous legal defense. These things are often most important precisely when it is least convenient and I don’t do public policy by an individual person or story, though certainly mourn those losses. The people you describe in your first paragraph maybe should be more cautious, but I still think the sledgehammers were pretty extreme when scalpels may have been more appropriate.
Many of us did object to some restraints in response to terrorism, though ultimately I think most of us put up with tighter airport security which is targeted and directly connected to the events of 9/11. I don’t recall being told to cancel all events or be afraid of each other. In fact, I recall being told that if we did not proceed with our lives the terrorists have won. We stood up to terrorism, but we cower in the face of microbe.
I also want to push back on these being called conservative arguments. Even though the rightwing nihilists are looking for a similar result most of them couldn’t construct a coherent argument if their lives depended on it. What has confused and bothered me is it should have been LIBERALS who as with terrorism reaction should have at least asked questions about the impact on other health issues, the economy, education, quality of life, civil liberties, etc. Instead what we got is SHUT DOWN NOW OR WE’RE ALL DEAD IN A WEEK! and anyone who dared question the strategy or the premise was made out to be a pariah.
“If a teenage girl can be held responsible for urging her boyfriend to kill himself, shouldn’t Tucker Carlson be held responsible for urging Americans not to vaccinate despite a deadly pandemic.” George Takei
Probably not – not direct enough to get around the first amendment.
“He’s such a moron.” Speaker Pelosi about McCarthy saying a mask mandate is against the science.
Was wearing a mask today while pumping gas and a 30’3 something guy pulled up behind me, got out and said “F.ucking Sheep.” To which I replied: “Is that what you were doing before you got here?” from a friend
I don’t understand such people. Your wearing a mask hurts him not one whit.
My incredibly busy daughter is having to turn handsprings to provide a (non-Covid) vaccination record to the Boston Ballet School in order for my 3+ year old grand-daughter to attend her first summer “ballet camp”. They won’t allow her to attend without confirmation that she has the needed vaccinations.
It is frigging ABSURD that 3 year olds have to have proof of vaccination to attend ballet school while the entire nation’s health and economy are at risk because vicious, racist, and incredibly cynical seditionists have programmed tens of millions of people to refuse the COVID vaccine.
“Mandate” is not a bad word.
The COVID vaccine should be mandatory. Period. Every state. Every person above 12, children to follow as soon as pediatric data confirms its safety.
Masks should be mandatory in every state where the vaccination percentage is below 70%.
This is absurd, insane, and dangerous.
As far as I know just about everyone has been vaccinated for MMR and tetanus. How was that enforced except by schools?
I would keep mask mandates as local as possible. In a state like TX for example, what’s necessary for the Metroplex probably isn’t for a county with a four-figure population.
I’m not objecting to the ballet school enforcing the vaccine mandate.
I’m objecting to the stupidity and willful cynical viciousness that results in tens of millions of Americans refusing to be vaccinated.
We need VACCINE mandates far more than mask mandates.
Mask mandates are the last and least effective resort that you use when a pandemic is raging around you.
This anti-vax stuff is just as crazy and insane as any of the Q-Anon garbage.
Have faith in the Pfizer vaccine. Don’t forget they make Viagra. If they can raise the dead…they can save the living. sign on storefront window
Imagine if in London during the Blitz there’d been a whole bunch of people going ” I’LL TURN ON MY LIGHTS IF I FEEL LIKE IT”
Let’s be clear.
Covid is now a political statement.
As I struggle to watch Fox News each morning, they continue to speak out against mask mandates, vaccine passports, and any safety regulations on schools or businesses that they define as “lockdowns”. In today’s new segment, they highlighted a New York restaurant on Lake George that is closing down for the winter but offering their employees a job at the owner’s other restaurant in Florida. The Fox person replied, “Once they get a taste of freedom, I doubt they will return to New York”.
Of course, there was no mention of the fact that Florida is second nationally in new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations, behind Louisiana and Nevada and the Sunshine State has made up about a fifth of new cases reported in the U.S. recently.
The New York Times reports that in some areas of the country, people are quietly entering pharmacies and medical offices trying not to be noticed as they ask for the vaccine and continue to tell their friends and relatives about it for fear of being seen as a “lib” or a “lefty”.
We are insane. Our media is insane. Our elected leaders are insane.
I have taken the J & J vaccine (last March). I turn 69 in less than a month and have several co-morbidities that put me at increased risk from the Delta variant.
I asked my doctor for guidance about whether I should get the two-dose Pfizer vaccine. Here is what I asked:
The practice (Atrius Health) responded with the following content-free response:
This illustrates how completely dysfunctional our healthcare system is. My PCP should be my first and best source of information about the relative risks of my taking the Pfizer vaccine vs waiting for the government to make a recommendation.
Surely because of liability risks, my PCP probably didn’t even see my request. I’m left having to make this crucial medical decision on my own, without guidance.
Our culture continues to spiral deeper and deeper into seditionist chaos while our information sources get less and less reliable.
This is insane.
I feel your pain. Our healthcare system has a purpose but that purpose is not to provide care. Its purpose it revenue to investors.
I went for bloodwork this week. The phlebotomist spent ten minutes on billing and data entry, five minutes on the actual blood draw.
The next day, I went to my PCP for an appointment to review the results. My address had changed and so I had to fill out a completely new form, including emergency notification, Social Security number, and other data that had not changed.
From there I went to an exam room where a medical tech took my blood pressure and few other vitals, and spent the majority of her visit entering data on the laptop. A nurse practitioner followed and admitted that she needed to ask me a slew of questions that had been asked and answered weeks earlier by a previous nurse practitioner. She asked the questions in rapid fire sequence, rarely taking her eyes off the laptop screen.
That was it. I was “processed” not cared for. I’ve had more emotional contact with sales clerks. “Meet ’em and Street ’em”…get the billing info and move onto the next patient. By the way, I do not fault the people who helped to “process’ me. That is the directive of their supervisors. I know far too many doctors who are recently retired or going to retire early and they tell me the same story; it’s all about the billing now.
It’s been longer than it should be since I’ve seen a doctor, but is that how it works these days? Was this an email exchange? Seems to me you should be able to call YOUR doctor and said doctor can either give an educated opinion on the spot or invite you to make an appointment to further discuss your particular needs and circumstances.
This was an exchange on a patient gateway, a secure channel designed to protect private health information. Of course, it also leaves an audit trail.
A doctor might speak more freely in a face-to-face in-person appointment, but I doubt it. Most voice appointments (phone, zoom, etc) are recorded, and so the doctor has no more freedom than on a gateway.
This is where the combination of a “free-market” health care system and our current reliance on lawsuits and liability for regulation has led us.
Are you really suggesting doctors are censoring themselves? I understand a discussion of what might be covered and what the potential risks/benefits are will eventually have to take place, but it seems the conversation should at least start with what s/he thinks is the best course of action for the patient’s health. I know malpractice suits can sometimes be in the nuisance category, but that’s why doctors carry insurance against that, right?
It does sound as though you haven’t been to see your doctor recently.
I don’t know whether or not my doctor will have the conversation I want in person.
I know for a fact (because I’ve just posted the transcript) that Harvard Atrius would not allow her to even see my message (my message was answered by someone I’ve never met nor heard of).
According to research I have read, malpractice lawsuits are quite rare and not the economic threat that some imagine. My hunch is it’s “all about the Benjamins” as they say, and taking time to sit and talk with a patient is not a money maker. Getting into detailed conversations, going over medical options takes too much time and a canned reply is simply more cost effective.
I’m guessing that the if owners of health care facilities see that receivables from telemedicine are in their favor, “going to see the doctor” will become as rare as mailing a letter.
I remember when doctors basically hung out the proverbial shingle. My strongest memories are actually of my pediatrician. His office really was HIS office. We dealt directly with him or maybe his nurse or receptionist if he were not available (but he would call back personally in those cases). There was no “practice” with some corporate name. In later years his own son joined him and would eventually inherit the office when the father passed away. He was patronized and loved by many local families and served long enough that many of his former patients would bring their kids to him. At the time of his death he was the pediatrician for some of the kids I had as a substitute teacher.
I agree.
My five children, with two different mothers, were all cared for by Dr. Nancy Hendrie of Concord. She was the epitome of the caring pediatrician you describe. As I recall, she also served as President of Emerson Hospital in Concord (where all five of my children were born).
Sadly, those days are long gone.
I did in fact have a candid and honest discussion with my PCP on the phone today, at my request over the weekend. I promised her, as she promised me, that our discussion was private. I therefore prefer not share here, at least for attribution.
She did answer my specific questions about the risks to me, and I appreciate that.
It would have been nice if everyone could have had that conversation with their doctors from the very beginning rather than deploy a strategy that assumes everyone is equally vulnerable. I much prefer to have each person individually assess their risk and how much they feel comfortable engaging in routine activities rather than force a society-wide shutdown.