Neverending Covid-19 Coronavirus

Goatfish said:
Sounds like a pretty racist language based on the delivery of the comments, but demographics-wise, it appears to be fairly accurate as far as vaccine uptake. I don't think anyone can make any meaningful conclusions on WHY there is a demographic split - just speculation:

www.kff.org

Latest Data on COVID-19 Vaccinations by Race/Ethnicity | KFF

KFF is collecting and analyzing data on COVID-19 vaccinations by race/ethnicity to gain increased insight who is receiving the vaccine and whether some groups are facing disparities in vaccination.
www.kff.org www.kff.org

covid.cdc.gov

COVID Data Tracker

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.
covid.cdc.gov

The rural white Americans live in more sparsely populated areas that are less effected by COVID outbreaks. The greater concern would be getting to maximum vaccine uptake in urban areas and places with higher population density, so hopefully these demographic trends shift soon.
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Everything about this pandemic, from how folks reacted to it to how they feel about the vaccine is far more complicated than the simple partisan divides that have been presented in media stories.

The folks who actively participated in the overt politicization of the pandemic should be strung up for the damage they’ve done. They’ve prevented any chance that ever existed to not just present folks with reasoned options, but also made it near impossible to correctly identify issues that may prevent folks from making reasoned choices.

This is the point where I would normally say ‘a pox on them all’ but the pox is already on us all.
 
85% of republicans believe it is a HIPAA violation if businesses ask them for a proof vaccination.

HIPAA has absolutely nothing to do with this. HIPAA only covers employee's of a business. Not a businesses patrons.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
85% of republicans believe it is a HIPAA violation if businesses ask them for a proof vaccination.

HIPAA has absolutely nothing to do with this. HIPAA only covers employee's of a business. Not a businesses patrons.
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The general public as a whole have no clue how HIPAA functions.

Regardless, I’m not offering up medical information to any yahoo who asks. If the choice is to present personal medical information or not patronize a business, the business loses my patronage permanently.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
85% of republicans believe it is a HIPAA violation if businesses ask them for a proof vaccination.

HIPAA has absolutely nothing to do with this. HIPAA only covers employee's of a business. Not a businesses patrons.
Click to expand...
To further expand on this, anyone can ask for anyone else's medical history. The violation only occurs if the medical professional releases the information without the patient's okay.

My work can ask my doctor for my past medical history. No violations there. They can ask me. No violation. The concert venue can request proof of vaccination. No HIPAA violation. I can give the information to all parties that asked for it. Still no violation. My doctor can contact me and ask me if I am okay with them releasing the information to my work. NO VIOLATION. A concert venue or a restaurant or a grocery store can deny my entrance if I don't show them proof of vaccination. Violation? Nope! My doctor or any other medical professional releases my private info without asking me, first? Ding ding ding. There's where HIPAA comes in.

The amount of people that think HIPAA has anything to do with entrance to private establishments, or that HIPAA means that all medical information is some Secret File never to be opened is wild.

I could also be really wrong about that. I'm going off of a paper I read years and years ago that, admittedly, I barely understood any of. This is just what my jelly-brain got out of it, after Googling half the words. Ha.
 
@Skeletonframes Yup, that's all right. The only thing I would add to it is it's not must medical professionals releasing your private information without your consent. You employer also can not release any of your medical information without your consent. Say you have a medical condition that you require accommodation for. It would be a HIPAA violation is they disclosed what that medical condition was without your consent to anyone who asked them.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
@Skeletonframes Yup, that's all right. The only thing I would add to it is it's not must medical professionals releasing your private information without your consent. You employer also can not release any of your medical information without your consent. Say you have a medical condition that you require accommodation for. It would be a HIPAA violation is they disclosed what that medical condition was without your consent to anyone who asked them.
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And don't forget about places like your insurance company. They also cannot release your medical information without your consent. There was a big story about this not too long ago where Google was partnering with Ascension health systems under the guise of helping them with their data, since they are a largely non-profit Catholic based hospital system:

On November 14 last year, the British Guardian published an account from an anonymous whistleblower at Google, accusing the company of misconduct in regard to handling sensitive health data. The whistleblower works for Project Nightingale, an attempt by Google to get into the lucrative US healthcare market, by storing and processing the personal medical data of up to 50 million customers of Ascension, one of America's largest healthcare providers. As the Wall Street Journal had already reported 3 days earlier, and as the whistleblower confirmed, neither was the data anonymized when transmitted from Ascension nor were patients or their doctors notified, let alone asked for consent to sharing their data with Google (Copeland, 2019; Pilkington, 2019). As a result, Google employees had full access to non‐anonymous patient health data.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Google's Project Nightingale highlights the necessity of data science ethics review

On November 14 last year, the British Guardian published an account from an anonymous whistleblower at Google, accusing the company of misconduct in regard to handling sensitive health data. The whistleblower works for Project Nightingale, an attempt ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

And technically, Google can get away with this:

Ascension, a Catholic not-for-profit health system, said in a press release all of Google's work with its data is "underpinned by a robust data security and protection effort" and compliant with its "strict requirements for data handling."

The 1996 HIPAA law allows such data collection without direct patient consent as long as its is being used to help the secondary company "carry out its health care functions." In this case, the function is to design new software leveraging its hefty artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities for care management and personalized health recommendations, with the end goal of creating a search tool aggregating patient data in one place, the documents reportedly say.

www.healthcaredive.com

Google's 'Project Nightingale' prompts HHS investigation

The Office of Civil Rights launched a federal inquiry into Google's R&D using the personal health information of tens of millions of patients from Ascension, the nation's second-largest health system.
www.healthcaredive.com www.healthcaredive.com

Here's the deal with a lot of these algorithms; they are put into place to score patients for potential adverse health events. What this means is that they are trying to figure out when the people in these health systems hit a critical point where they become high users of health care (i.e. their benefits cost too much for employers to want to fund). I'm worried because as I work in healthcare, I see a constant obsession with finding accurate AI models to score people. I am concerned that these models will be used against people in the future.

Anywho, sorry to go off on a tangent...
 
To be honest, I think measures should be taken to secure for both possibilities. Gain-of-function studies are essential but they must be done intelligently and securely. I don't want to go into specifics as to why they are necessary, but I also think that standards should be put in place and that ethics review boards should exist just like they do for the approval of animal testing (maybe they do in certain countries already, mind you).

If this came out of WIV, they fucked the whole world not because the accident occurred but because they didn't acknowledge it and take the proper steps to contain it early, whoever "they" is (government, prideful scientist). There would be so much parallels to the early days of "Chernobyl" if this is the case.

But we must also understand that the encroachment of urban areas into nature (bushmeat, sprawl, even farming practices) can also lead to zoonoses and not just in Asia but in the west as well. There is a lot of reckoning here, regardless of the cause.
 
Chucktshoes said:
Pretty good article from Bret Weinstein on why the lab leak theory should be the desired origin.

Why we should welcome the lab leak hypothesis - UnHerd
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I pretty much figured the argument was that it's a good thing if this is an enhanced superbug because if it were to be from nature, then there will be many more to follow as we continue to encroach on natural habitats. I do like this point the article makes:

The most important lesson is actually not about pathogens and pandemics at all, though it is about evolution of a sort. Science is an astonishing process that is capable of liberating us and making us both wiser and safer. But wisdom and safety are not guaranteed. Everything about the conduct of science depends on the incentives around it; if we want wisdom, insight and safety, then those are the values that must be rewarded in our scientific establishment.

But as it stands, science is plagued by a system of perverse incentives in which scientists are condemned to constantly compete for jobs and grant money just to stay in the game. The repercussions of this have been clear for decades, as scientists exaggerate, distort and mislead in order to get their own work (or their field’s work) funded.

And because there is a risk of another coronavirus that could be worse, I agree that we should look into the origins. However, I do not believe that the Chinese government will ever give the international community the sort of access they would need to prove this one way or another. So the question then becomes, what do we do, given our need for China's manufacturing? Do we continue to try to hold the Chinese government accountable at the expense of trade relations? While I know what I would do, my thinking is that our elected officials will not want to jeopardize our trade with China, so regardless of whether or not it originated from a lab in Wuhan, I don't think any of our politicians will do anything to move this inquiry farther.
 
This is depressing, but all too obvious. We have a predatory system that rewards surprise billers and pharma bros. How did we think this wouldn't happen?:

Though Congress passed legislation mandating that Covid-19 vaccines be free at the point of use for all U.S. residents, around one-third of unvaccinated people cited fear of cost as a significant reason they’ve yet to get the jab. Even worse, it’s a barrier for people who seem to genuinely want it: a full 45 percent of those stipulating that they hope to get it “as soon as possible,” compared to only 19 percent of those resolutely opposed.

Per a follow-up report in The New York Times, this phenomenon isn’t solely ascribable to ignorance about the mandate against cost-sharing. Apparently, many people do know that the jabs are supposed to be free. They just don’t believe it. As one still unvaccinated 42-year-old put it, “This is America—your health care is not free.… I just feel like that is how the vaccination process is going to go. They’re going to try to capitalize on it.”

newrepublic.com

Many More Americans Would Be Vaccinated if Our Health Care System Wasn’t So Terrifying

People don’t trust an industry known for bureaucratic traps and surprise billing to save them from the pandemic.
newrepublic.com newrepublic.com
 
Skeletonframes said:
To further expand on this, anyone can ask for anyone else's medical history. The violation only occurs if the medical professional releases the information without the patient's okay.

My work can ask my doctor for my past medical history. No violations there. They can ask me. No violation. The concert venue can request proof of vaccination. No HIPAA violation. I can give the information to all parties that asked for it. Still no violation. My doctor can contact me and ask me if I am okay with them releasing the information to my work. NO VIOLATION. A concert venue or a restaurant or a grocery store can deny my entrance if I don't show them proof of vaccination. Violation? Nope! My doctor or any other medical professional releases my private info without asking me, first? Ding ding ding. There's where HIPAA comes in.

The amount of people that think HIPAA has anything to do with entrance to private establishments, or that HIPAA means that all medical information is some Secret File never to be opened is wild.

I could also be really wrong about that. I'm going off of a paper I read years and years ago that, admittedly, I barely understood any of. This is just what my jelly-brain got out of it, after Googling half the words. Ha.
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As someone who makes and receives these requests often, you are right.
 
So, i thought I was dialing up the cliche of germanys hasselhoff love in my rotm thread ( which you should join , there is still a price to be won) but thisis from the official twitter of the german Health ministry


 
It's looking like Biden's goal of all 50 states reaching at least 70% of their population receiving at least the first dose of the vaccine will fail.

To date, only 13 states have reached this goal. And the rate that other states are reaching it are stalling. There is just too much hesitancy and people making this a political matter.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
It's looking like Biden's goal of all 50 states reaching at least 70% of their population receiving at least the first dose of the vaccine will fail.

To date, only 13 states have reached this goal. And the rate that other states are reaching it are stalling. There is just too much hesitancy and people making this a political matter.
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Frankly, instead of putting too much effort of getting the vaccination-hesitant parts of the population in the western countries vaccinated, I think everybody is helped more by putting theses efforts into getting the vaccines to willing people in countries in africa, asia or south - and middle america that don’t have access to enough vaccines right now. In fighting the global pandemic that would get us more bang for the buck
 
RenegadeMonster said:
It's looking like Biden's goal of all 50 states reaching at least 70% of their population receiving at least the first dose of the vaccine will fail.

To date, only 13 states have reached this goal. And the rate that other states are reaching it are stalling. There is just too much hesitancy and people making this a political matter.
Click to expand...
I just linked to an article above, there is a large group of Americans who are hesitant because of cost. While they understand that the vaccine is supposed to be free, they don't really believe our health system won't try to charge them for something. This is the hesitancy a full one third of unvaccinated people in the US face; the hesitancy to engage with a system that regularly surprise bills and price gouges users.
 
nolalady said:
I just linked to an article above, there is a large group of Americans who are hesitant because of cost. While they understand that the vaccine is supposed to be free, they don't really believe our health system won't try to charge them for something. This is the hesitancy a full one third of unvaccinated people in the US face; the hesitancy to engage with a system that regularly surprise bills and price gouges users.
Click to expand...
I had read that as 1/3 of the unvaccinated were hesitant over potential costs not 1.3 of the entire population.
 
It looks like despite the shot being free, there are costs / bills associated with it.

I was just reading about how when someone got their shot they asked for insurance. He had asked why do you need my insurance, the shots supposed to be free. They replied with "Administrative Fees".

And sure enough, there were administrative fees that showed up on their EBO. Though covered by their insurance 100%. The shot it self was billed for $0.01.

But what happens when someone doesn't have insurance>
 
RenegadeMonster said:
It looks like despite the shot being free, there are costs / bills associated with it.

I was just reading about how when someone got their shot they asked for insurance. He had asked why do you need my insurance, the shots supposed to be free. They replied with "Administrative Fees".

And sure enough, there were administrative fees that showed up on their EBO. Though covered by their insurance 100%. The shot it self was billed for $0.01.

But what happens when someone doesn't have insurance>
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I don’t bother getting the shot.
 
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