Detecting the next pandemic

[temporal1]

my personal history is great appreciation of vaccines

[ken_sylvania]

I lost two uncles to a vaccine-preventable disease. I never knew them, but if free Diphtheria vaccine was available prior to WWII, they would still be alive.

Maybe. Maybe not.

[JohnH]

Now, five plus years out, people seem to forget that so many were dead from this that we had refrigerator trucks at the loading dock of where I worked, just to hold the dead that the overwhelmed funeral homes could not get buried. And, yet, we have fault finding, Monday morning quarterbacking, and general conspiracy mongering, as we see above. Dan, some will never learn.

Is this narrative entirely factual?

I know an undertaker in Michigan. In 2020, they experienced a decline in business. One thing he does is do work for other cities, morgues, etc where he would drive an hour or two and take care of a body, usually from a hospital. In 2020, he was not able to find as much business doing that and had to expand his search radius nearly to Detroit.

He said if there were overwhelmed funeral homes and morgues, he would have been happy to drive and go get the extra business.

[JohnH]

I won't even get into the Hep B controversy, but the rates of liver cancer in people infected are sky-high.

I lost two uncles to a vaccine-preventable disease. I never knew them, but if free Diphtheria vaccine was available prior to WWII, they would still be alive. Wander through any 19th-century cemetery. The number of young children buried will astound you.

So repeating the mistakes of the pre-vaccine era is simple insanity.

I hear fearmongering about how it’s “sky high”, yet in my extended plain social circles I know of no one, and nobody who knows someone else, who has gotten any of these diseases were supposed to be so afraid of. If it were really such a big problem, you’d think there’d be at least one person.

Amish vaccination rates have always been low, and continue to be at around 15%. We do not see these diseases at sharply higher rates amongst them.

(I do not avoid the tdap vaccine, but I also don’t like the fear mongering. It doesn’t work.)

[Judas Maccabeus]

Now, five plus years out, people seem to forget that so many were dead from this that we had refrigerator trucks at the loading dock of where I worked, just to hold the dead that the overwhelmed funeral homes could not get buried. And, yet, we have fault finding, Monday morning quarterbacking, and general conspiracy mongering, as we see above. Dan, some will never learn.

Is this narrative entirely factual?

I know an undertaker in Michigan. In 2020, they experienced a decline in business. One thing he does is do work for other cities, morgues, etc where he would drive an hour or two and take care of a body, usually from a hospital. In 2020, he was not able to find as much business doing that and had to expand his search radius nearly to Detroit.

He said if there were overwhelmed funeral homes and morgues, he would have been happy to drive and go get the extra business.

I doubt he was willing to travel to Baltimore.

I was there. I saw the bodies moving in and out. I was right across from the loading dock. I saw this from my control room window. Not to mention, what we were hearing from administration. They were housing patients in conference rooms and in one case that I know of, in a parking garage with hastily built partitions. I had numerous no-shows because they were dead from COVID. No answer from phone, so I had to order the drug in case they showed.

One of my CT tech colleagues died from it. Probably caught it at work. Wife and children, don’t remember how many.

You seem to be trying to rewrite history. It may work in some places, it will not work as long as witnesses are still around.

Both my wife and I are witnesses. This sort of thing is similar to Holocaust denial. I just wish I had pictures, but I was too busy taking care of people rather than running my mouth.

[Judas Maccabeus]

I won't even get into the Hep B controversy, but the rates of liver cancer in people infected are sky-high.

I lost two uncles to a vaccine-preventable disease. I never knew them, but if free Diphtheria vaccine was available prior to WWII, they would still be alive. Wander through any 19th-century cemetery. The number of young children buried will astound you.

So repeating the mistakes of the pre-vaccine era is simple insanity.

I hear fearmongering about how it’s “sky high”, yet in my extended plain social circles I know of no one, and nobody who knows someone else, who has gotten any of these diseases were supposed to be so afraid of. If it were really such a big problem, you’d think there’d be at least one person.

Amish vaccination rates have always been low, and continue to be at around 15%. We do not see these diseases at sharply higher rates amongst them.

(I do not avoid the tdap vaccine, but I also don’t like the fear mongering. It doesn’t work.)

Actually it is truth mongering.

[Judas Maccabeus]

I lost two uncles to a vaccine-preventable disease. I never knew them, but if free Diphtheria vaccine was available prior to WWII, they would still be alive.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Almost certainly. As it is DPT is highly effective.

[mike]

I did pretty much all the things with the Covid pandemic. Social distanced to a certain extent, wore masks where absolutely required, suspended church services, made my employees wear masks and requested from customers, got Covid, my dad got covid, had friends who got it, I got the Moderna shot and booster, all of that.

I think of all the political garbage and the reactions and the work stress and relational stress, and I absolutely dread a repeat. My sense is that another similar pandemic will probably result in lower levels of compliance with public health directives. I had a friend whose mother died alone in the hospital because the family was not allowed to be present due to Covid, and nothing will ever cause that family not to resent health authorities.

[ken_sylvania]

I lost two uncles to a vaccine-preventable disease. I never knew them, but if free Diphtheria vaccine was available prior to WWII, they would still be alive.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Almost certainly. As it is DPT is highly effective.

I don't disagree with your basic premise - just figured they might have died of old age by about now...

[Dan Z]

I did pretty much all the things with the Covid pandemic. Social distanced to a certain extent, wore masks where absolutely required, suspended church services, made my employees wear masks and requested from customers, got Covid, my dad got covid, had friends who got it, I got the Moderna shot and booster, all of that.

I think of all the political garbage and the reactions and the work stress and relational stress, and I absolutely dread a repeat. My sense is that another similar pandemic will probably result in lower levels of compliance with public health directives. I had a friend whose mother died alone in the hospital because the family was not allowed to be present due to Covid, and nothing will ever cause that family not to resent health authorities.

The thought of folks dying alone, cut off from family, continues to make me very sad.

It seems clear to me that the government and health officials overreached at times, especially in the more extreme enforcement of social distancing. I don't see a conspiracy here, just a failure on the part of the authorities (Fauci included) to fully account for the relational, emotional, and economic cost of social distancing relative to the (limited) benefits of slowing down transmission. In the end, distancing (and masks for that matter) was a pretty weak tool in fighting the spread of the virus. The greatest benefit came from the vaccine, combined with the cumulative effect of herd immunity over time. Hopefully these experiences will inform the public health response in the future.

Unfortunately, regardless of lessons learned, politically-stoked cynicism along with some really emotionally negative experiences will make the job of the public health officials quite difficult in the future - at society's peril if a more virulent disease emerges.