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Qualifying for COVID vaccine solely on BMI
Replies
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Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »I think you should take the vaccine whenever you can. It can sound selfish, but actually each person who has it is one less to potentially burden an ICU and one less to pass it on to someone else, so it's actually rather selfless. (Just like taking other precautions, such as wearing a mask.)
I just want to pass this on since a couple of people have said otherwise:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 can still be infected with or “carry” the virus that causes COVID-19 while not feeling sick or having symptoms. Experts call this “asymptomatic infection.”Mar 5, 20211 -
That's been discussed. It increasingly appears that the likelihood of passing on an infection is much less if one is vaccinated.5
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Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »I think you should take the vaccine whenever you can. It can sound selfish, but actually each person who has it is one less to potentially burden an ICU and one less to pass it on to someone else, so it's actually rather selfless. (Just like taking other precautions, such as wearing a mask.)
I just want to pass this on since a couple of people have said otherwise:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 can still be infected with or “carry” the virus that causes COVID-19 while not feeling sick or having symptoms. Experts call this “asymptomatic infection.”Mar 5, 2021
It's like how a person wearing a seatbelt can still get killed in a car accident. Even so, it would be dumb not to wear a seatbelt.9 -
Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »I think you should take the vaccine whenever you can. It can sound selfish, but actually each person who has it is one less to potentially burden an ICU and one less to pass it on to someone else, so it's actually rather selfless. (Just like taking other precautions, such as wearing a mask.)
I just want to pass this on since a couple of people have said otherwise:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 can still be infected with or “carry” the virus that causes COVID-19 while not feeling sick or having symptoms. Experts call this “asymptomatic infection.”Mar 5, 2021
I think a more accurate way to describe this would be to say "a person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 has not been definitively proven to not still be infected with or “carry” the virus that causes COVID-19 while not feeling sick or having symptoms."
But if you were able to transmit it, it would be very unusual in the world of vaccines.5 -
I just copied it. Tell the CDC if it should be rewritten.3
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I just copied it. Tell the CDC if it should be rewritten.
Well, they probably won't listen. But I think it's a mistake to phrase it that way for a variety of reasons. This isn't the first beef I've had with the CDC and their recommendations (which for me started well before the pandemic), and it probably won't be the last, either.
I told myself I wasn't going to get into this kind of thing here because it's so contentious and controversial, even with my loved ones offline, and I wish now I just hadn't replied. So, let's drop it and I'll have to remind myself to stop posting on covid-related threads for the time being.
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I just copied it. Tell the CDC if it should be rewritten.
It's good to keep people honest. Sometimes the details matter.
It's also good to be an informed consumer including of information.
What the CDC says above is factually true, but can be misunderstood out of context.
A person who has been vaccinated can still carry the virus. This shouldn't surprise anyone because the vaccines have efficacy rates around 95%. If a person who has been vaccinated couldn't still be infected they would be 100% effective. 🙂
Vaccines seem to be 100% effective at preventing death from covid. There is a growing body of evidence that vaccinated people are drastically less able to transmit the virus for the same reason they don't get dead. All we have to do is knock "the R number" below 1 and keep it there.
I hope you don't think 0% protection is better than 95% protection ...11 -
Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »I think you should take the vaccine whenever you can. It can sound selfish, but actually each person who has it is one less to potentially burden an ICU and one less to pass it on to someone else, so it's actually rather selfless. (Just like taking other precautions, such as wearing a mask.)
I just want to pass this on since a couple of people have said otherwise:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 can still be infected with or “carry” the virus that causes COVID-19 while not feeling sick or having symptoms. Experts call this “asymptomatic infection.”Mar 5, 2021
Your immune system isn't a force field preventing the virus from entering your body in the first place, so if you're exposed, some virus will get into your system, so you would be "carrying" some virus. But your immune system after you're vaccinated goes after the virus when it gets into your body, and blocks it as much as possible from getting inside of cells and multiplying. Therefore you would develop a much smaller viral load if at all.3 -
The virus starts multiplying once it gets into your body, it keeps making more and more and more viruses as time goes on.
Either your immune system notices something is up and figures out what's going on and then how to recognize the enemy ... or your immune system has already learned and can get to work right away.
It's kind of like a race. If the virus can make so many more viruses it's overwhelming, your immune system can make you sick when it tries to put the fire out, and also you have plenty virus to shed. If your immune system can get a jump on the virus, the numbers usually never get big enough to cause much damage to you or to shed much.
That's the view from 10,000 feet, it's drastically simplified but I hope it gets the basic point across. So you can see it's true the vaccine doesn't absolutely prevent but that doesn't mean it isn't helpful. It's our way out of this. The mRNA ones especially because they can keep up with mutations. The more people get vaccinated, the less the virus will be able to mutate, and the harder it will be for it to find new people to infect. We don't have another answer.5 -
Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »I think you should take the vaccine whenever you can. It can sound selfish, but actually each person who has it is one less to potentially burden an ICU and one less to pass it on to someone else, so it's actually rather selfless. (Just like taking other precautions, such as wearing a mask.)
I just want to pass this on since a couple of people have said otherwise:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 can still be infected with or “carry” the virus that causes COVID-19 while not feeling sick or having symptoms. Experts call this “asymptomatic infection.”Mar 5, 2021
Your immune system isn't a force field preventing the virus from entering your body in the first place, so if you're exposed, some virus will get into your system, so you would be "carrying" some virus. But your immune system after you're vaccinated goes after the virus when it gets into your body, and blocks it as much as possible from getting inside of cells and multiplying. Therefore you would develop a much smaller viral load if at all.
I've seen the excitement in a person's eyes over the ability to visit vulnerable loved ones because of the vaccine, so it worries me. If there's a chance of transmitting the virus even after being vaccinated, people should know so they can make an informed decision. That's my only motivation here.1 -
Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »I think you should take the vaccine whenever you can. It can sound selfish, but actually each person who has it is one less to potentially burden an ICU and one less to pass it on to someone else, so it's actually rather selfless. (Just like taking other precautions, such as wearing a mask.)
I just want to pass this on since a couple of people have said otherwise:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 can still be infected with or “carry” the virus that causes COVID-19 while not feeling sick or having symptoms. Experts call this “asymptomatic infection.”Mar 5, 2021
Your immune system isn't a force field preventing the virus from entering your body in the first place, so if you're exposed, some virus will get into your system, so you would be "carrying" some virus. But your immune system after you're vaccinated goes after the virus when it gets into your body, and blocks it as much as possible from getting inside of cells and multiplying. Therefore you would develop a much smaller viral load if at all.
I've seen the excitement in a person's eyes over the ability to visit vulnerable loved ones because of the vaccine, so it worries me. If there's a chance of transmitting the virus even after being vaccinated, people should know so they can make an informed decision. That's my only motivation here.
Just learn how to read CDC statements, is all.
You realize this vaccine program is only a few months in, right? It's not like they can purposely try to infect people to see what happens. Vaccinated people are going to be the way out of this. If you don't believe that, then just stay away from the rest of the population. No one is making you get vaccinated.4 -
I think it's pretty clear that right now the CDC is erring on the side of caution with their advice for vaccinated people.
From their own statement:
"We’re still learning how well COVID-19 vaccines keep people from spreading the disease.
Early data show that the vaccines may help keep people from spreading COVID-19, but we are learning more as more people get vaccinated."
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vaccinated.html
That's why they're advising fully vaccinated people to still be cautious about the potential for transmission, because we don't have the data.4 -
cmriverside wrote: »Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »I think you should take the vaccine whenever you can. It can sound selfish, but actually each person who has it is one less to potentially burden an ICU and one less to pass it on to someone else, so it's actually rather selfless. (Just like taking other precautions, such as wearing a mask.)
I just want to pass this on since a couple of people have said otherwise:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 can still be infected with or “carry” the virus that causes COVID-19 while not feeling sick or having symptoms. Experts call this “asymptomatic infection.”Mar 5, 2021
Your immune system isn't a force field preventing the virus from entering your body in the first place, so if you're exposed, some virus will get into your system, so you would be "carrying" some virus. But your immune system after you're vaccinated goes after the virus when it gets into your body, and blocks it as much as possible from getting inside of cells and multiplying. Therefore you would develop a much smaller viral load if at all.
I've seen the excitement in a person's eyes over the ability to visit vulnerable loved ones because of the vaccine, so it worries me. If there's a chance of transmitting the virus even after being vaccinated, people should know so they can make an informed decision. That's my only motivation here.
Just learn how to read CDC statements, is all.
You realize this vaccine program is only a few months in, right? It's not like they can purposely try to infect people to see what happens. Vaccinated people are going to be the way out of this. If you don't believe that, then just stay away from the rest of the population. No one is making you get vaccinated.
Re the bolded:-
Challenge Trials (purposefully vaccining then infecting) have been proposed for a couple of the vaccines.
The UK proposed one for the O-AZ using younger healthy adults. It got approved by the ethics committee, but I don’t know if it went forward. It was/is due to start sometime around this month.
Cheers, h.3 -
Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »I think you should take the vaccine whenever you can. It can sound selfish, but actually each person who has it is one less to potentially burden an ICU and one less to pass it on to someone else, so it's actually rather selfless. (Just like taking other precautions, such as wearing a mask.)
I just want to pass this on since a couple of people have said otherwise:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 can still be infected with or “carry” the virus that causes COVID-19 while not feeling sick or having symptoms. Experts call this “asymptomatic infection.”Mar 5, 2021
Your immune system isn't a force field preventing the virus from entering your body in the first place, so if you're exposed, some virus will get into your system, so you would be "carrying" some virus. But your immune system after you're vaccinated goes after the virus when it gets into your body, and blocks it as much as possible from getting inside of cells and multiplying. Therefore you would develop a much smaller viral load if at all.
I've seen the excitement in a person's eyes over the ability to visit vulnerable loved ones because of the vaccine, so it worries me. If there's a chance of transmitting the virus even after being vaccinated, people should know so they can make an informed decision. That's my only motivation here.
I get what you are saying, my take on it is if my Mom is vaccinated, and I also am vaccinated, then the already small risk of one of us dying of COVID (without vaccines) has been made that much smaller, to where it is almost negligible. Something like that is a risk that I am willing to take after a year of this, we can't eliminate every possible risk in life.
And with most vaccines even if you can still transmit and/or catch the virus the illness is much milder - so that is also something I would take into consideration.4 -
middlehaitch wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »I think you should take the vaccine whenever you can. It can sound selfish, but actually each person who has it is one less to potentially burden an ICU and one less to pass it on to someone else, so it's actually rather selfless. (Just like taking other precautions, such as wearing a mask.)
I just want to pass this on since a couple of people have said otherwise:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 can still be infected with or “carry” the virus that causes COVID-19 while not feeling sick or having symptoms. Experts call this “asymptomatic infection.”Mar 5, 2021
Your immune system isn't a force field preventing the virus from entering your body in the first place, so if you're exposed, some virus will get into your system, so you would be "carrying" some virus. But your immune system after you're vaccinated goes after the virus when it gets into your body, and blocks it as much as possible from getting inside of cells and multiplying. Therefore you would develop a much smaller viral load if at all.
I've seen the excitement in a person's eyes over the ability to visit vulnerable loved ones because of the vaccine, so it worries me. If there's a chance of transmitting the virus even after being vaccinated, people should know so they can make an informed decision. That's my only motivation here.
Just learn how to read CDC statements, is all.
You realize this vaccine program is only a few months in, right? It's not like they can purposely try to infect people to see what happens. Vaccinated people are going to be the way out of this. If you don't believe that, then just stay away from the rest of the population. No one is making you get vaccinated.
Re the bolded:-
Challenge Trials (purposefully vaccining then infecting) have been proposed for a couple of the vaccines.
The UK proposed one for the O-AZ using younger healthy adults. It got approved by the ethics committee, but I don’t know if it went forward. It was/is due to start sometime around this month.
Cheers, h.
Weirdly interesting.
The point being - right now, no one knows exactly how much the vaccine will stop the vaccinated from transmitting - and it seems a difficult if not impossible task to study. With that said, someone will study it.
All of this is one big giant experiment right now. Science! History! Statistics! Infectious disease! So interesting.0 -
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Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »I think you should take the vaccine whenever you can. It can sound selfish, but actually each person who has it is one less to potentially burden an ICU and one less to pass it on to someone else, so it's actually rather selfless. (Just like taking other precautions, such as wearing a mask.)
I just want to pass this on since a couple of people have said otherwise:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 can still be infected with or “carry” the virus that causes COVID-19 while not feeling sick or having symptoms. Experts call this “asymptomatic infection.”Mar 5, 2021
Your immune system isn't a force field preventing the virus from entering your body in the first place, so if you're exposed, some virus will get into your system, so you would be "carrying" some virus. But your immune system after you're vaccinated goes after the virus when it gets into your body, and blocks it as much as possible from getting inside of cells and multiplying. Therefore you would develop a much smaller viral load if at all.
I've seen the excitement in a person's eyes over the ability to visit vulnerable loved ones because of the vaccine, so it worries me. If there's a chance of transmitting the virus even after being vaccinated, people should know so they can make an informed decision. That's my only motivation here.
I get what you are saying, my take on it is if my Mom is vaccinated, and I also am vaccinated, then the already small risk of one of us dying of COVID (without vaccines) has been made that much smaller, to where it is almost negligible. Something like that is a risk that I am willing to take after a year of this, we can't eliminate every possible risk in life.
I can't see anyone seriously disagreeing with this.
The concern would be if we were vaccinating younger people and not older people and telling them to go visit older relatives without masks and distancing and so on, but of course that is not happening. Generally, older people are being vaccinated first (but for people in the medical field who were in the first wave), and people aren't being told to disregard any precautions when interacting with unvaccinated people. At least, that's what I see where I am. Of course, it will be even better when most of the population is vaccinated.4 -
cmriverside wrote: »middlehaitch wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »I think you should take the vaccine whenever you can. It can sound selfish, but actually each person who has it is one less to potentially burden an ICU and one less to pass it on to someone else, so it's actually rather selfless. (Just like taking other precautions, such as wearing a mask.)
I just want to pass this on since a couple of people have said otherwise:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 can still be infected with or “carry” the virus that causes COVID-19 while not feeling sick or having symptoms. Experts call this “asymptomatic infection.”Mar 5, 2021
Your immune system isn't a force field preventing the virus from entering your body in the first place, so if you're exposed, some virus will get into your system, so you would be "carrying" some virus. But your immune system after you're vaccinated goes after the virus when it gets into your body, and blocks it as much as possible from getting inside of cells and multiplying. Therefore you would develop a much smaller viral load if at all.
I've seen the excitement in a person's eyes over the ability to visit vulnerable loved ones because of the vaccine, so it worries me. If there's a chance of transmitting the virus even after being vaccinated, people should know so they can make an informed decision. That's my only motivation here.
Just learn how to read CDC statements, is all.
You realize this vaccine program is only a few months in, right? It's not like they can purposely try to infect people to see what happens. Vaccinated people are going to be the way out of this. If you don't believe that, then just stay away from the rest of the population. No one is making you get vaccinated.
Re the bolded:-
Challenge Trials (purposefully vaccining then infecting) have been proposed for a couple of the vaccines.
The UK proposed one for the O-AZ using younger healthy adults. It got approved by the ethics committee, but I don’t know if it went forward. It was/is due to start sometime around this month.
Cheers, h.
Weirdly interesting.
The point being - right now, no one knows exactly how much the vaccine will stop the vaccinated from transmitting - and it seems a difficult if not impossible task to study. With that said, someone will study it.
All of this is one big giant experiment right now. Science! History! Statistics! Infectious disease! So interesting.
I can attest to the thing about challenge trials, I was following that too, but it fell off my radar. If you find this interesting, read more about SARS 1 when you have time. They developed what they hoped would be a vaccine and it showed promise in the lab, but the virus mysteriously disappeared so the large scale "in the wild" testing that challenge trials are intended to shortcut, never happened it became impossible.0 -
Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »I think you should take the vaccine whenever you can. It can sound selfish, but actually each person who has it is one less to potentially burden an ICU and one less to pass it on to someone else, so it's actually rather selfless. (Just like taking other precautions, such as wearing a mask.)
I just want to pass this on since a couple of people have said otherwise:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a person who is vaccinated against COVID-19 can still be infected with or “carry” the virus that causes COVID-19 while not feeling sick or having symptoms. Experts call this “asymptomatic infection.”Mar 5, 2021
Your immune system isn't a force field preventing the virus from entering your body in the first place, so if you're exposed, some virus will get into your system, so you would be "carrying" some virus. But your immune system after you're vaccinated goes after the virus when it gets into your body, and blocks it as much as possible from getting inside of cells and multiplying. Therefore you would develop a much smaller viral load if at all.
I've seen the excitement in a person's eyes over the ability to visit vulnerable loved ones because of the vaccine, so it worries me. If there's a chance of transmitting the virus even after being vaccinated, people should know so they can make an informed decision. That's my only motivation here.
We cannot eliminate all risk but being vaccinated reduces it to a level most of us (I believe) are prepared to accept in exchange for a 'normal' life again.4 -
Eligibility on a bmi of 26 does seem rather strange to me - might as well just be open to all at that point.
Because bmi of 26 is so close to healthy bmi ( indeed is healthy bmi for some people, like young active males) that it seems a pointless criteria.
Here in South Australia we will be moving to phase b next week
Phase a was frontline health workers, quarantine and international airport workers, staff and residents of aged care and disability homes.
Phase b - all other health workers, anyone over 70,aboriginal people over 50, people with serious chronic health conditions ( there is specific list of these) and bmi over 40.1 -
Quick update...
Our state is opening up vaccines to everyone starting May 1. I did opt to make an appointment based on the eligibility and will be receiving my first dose on April 11. I waffled back and forth, but ultimately, if I'm eligible based on the criteria, I'm going to get it. I'm guessing things will get crazy when it's opened up for all.4 -
I would like to add that the fact that these people are obese isn`t necessarily the only reaso why they get the vaccine. Having a higher BMI does most time come along with having other health problems such as high blood pressure, diabetes (quite a lot people are not diagnosed because the symptoms didn´t show up) and the additional body weight can make them have problems breathing.0
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Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »I think you should take the vaccine whenever you can. It can sound selfish, but actually each person who has it is one less to potentially burden an ICU and one less to pass it on to someone else, so it's actually rather selfless. (Just like taking other precautions, such as wearing a mask.)
I agree with this. An analogous situation was early on when administrative hospital workers were offered vaccine along with health care workers. Getting 300M people vaccinated (twice for the earliest vaccine brands) is a big task. The people organizing that task have access to more information to make those decisions than the average Joe like me. Average Joes should not rethink those decisions. Better to be a part of the solution by just getting the shot promptly when powers-that-be decide it’s time for you.2 -
I'm sure that the people making the decisions for 'who's next' for the vaccine aren't the people who SHOULD be making that decision (as is often the case when things are politicized)...but the decision for who should be next to get it should prioritize the load on our healthcare services.
So, the first people who get the vaccine should be the people who would be most likely to need hospitalization or intense treatment. Then next, so on and so on. I assume that BMI got put on there because there was a correlation between BMI and hospitalization.
The issue was having too many people needing hospital services - and not having enough beds, equipment or hospital staff to help them and having deaths that could have been avoided due to that.2 -
Doesn't seem relevant to a discussion of vaccines.
Why do you think the vaccine is more risky than getting covid or future covid mutations?4 -
Nothing is 100% safe. Nothing. Sorry I know too many people right now who are in the ICU on ventilators dying of Covid. Plus it puts a terrible strain on the health care system where people with other health issues are being denied life altering surgeries and treatments because of covid patients. Cancer patients are dying because of this. I have health issues and am immunocompromised. I'll take the chance of feeling unwell for a day or so than ending up in the ICu dying a horrible death. I also will take the small risk and not be the cause of others deaths if I have to take up a hospital bed which I would otherwise not be in.5
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Well it's certainly your right not to take any drugs or vaccine (not a drug btw) and how a previous experience has changed your life but not also not doing those things is risking your life too unless you live somewhere were covid isn't a problem anymore.3
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The topic of this thread is whether it's fair to qualify for the vaccine based on BMI, and that seems moot since I believe it's open to anyone at this point (it certainly is in my state). It is not a thread for anti vaxx debate. There was such a thread, maybe it still exists, don't remember.4
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The topic of this thread is whether it's fair to qualify for the vaccine based on BMI, and that seems moot since I believe it's open to anyone at this point (it certainly is in my state). It is not a thread for anti vaxx debate. There was such a thread, maybe it still exists, don't remember.
There was, but it's no longer with us.1 -
The topic of this thread is whether it's fair to qualify for the vaccine based on BMI, and that seems moot since I believe it's open to anyone at this point (it certainly is in my state). It is not a thread for anti vaxx debate. There was such a thread, maybe it still exists, don't remember.
It got somewhat heated and the mods nuked it...1
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