STEAM ROOM FOR ANGER

Sorry but a physician who does not want to treat an unvaccinated person is within his/her rights for self-preservation. Too many healthcare workers have made the sacrifice both pre- and now post-vaccine availability. Now that the vaccine is available, why should they or their other patients have to make the sacrifice for those who opt out? Your physician can discharge you from their practice if you fail to take responsibility for other aspects of your healthcare as well. Why should their insurance premiums be raised by poor decision making, untoward outcomes and patient's who too late have now seen the light that their advice was probably best followed? You can make the decision to change physician's if you do not like their advice nor wish to follow it. So I think the same applies to them so they can protect not only themselves but also their loved ones who may be at high risk. As John Donne said " No man is an island, entire to itself". For every decision one makes there are consequences and while I do respect your decision, I do not agree with it. So no bullying, nor discrimination from me, just the hard facts from my viewpoint. I hope you can find the peace you are seeking.

April,

That was a lovely post. You seem like a very kind person. Yes, I agree that as a stage IV member, the continuing pandemic has dampened some of my plans. I just retired and had really hoped to have the freedom to travel. I hope that freedom returns while I'm still doing well. Mostly doing heavy grandma duty right now, which I love, of course!

Since I have now had my booster, am I a three chipper? I still want to be blue tooth connectable but that only comes with the Asta Zeneca vax 😉.

rxbrnxgrl - My husband got AZ/Pfizer! I don't think his Bluetooth works. Maybe it needs to come in pairs? 😉

I don’t post very often but feel I need to say something. Why yes, we will be seeing variants because of the unvaccinated. Yes, there have been breakthrough cases of the vaccinated. So far, their cases are much milder and survivable. Let’s not get to the point that the virus is so virulent that science has difficulty staying ahead of covid. We’re seeing delta and lambda now. Must we go through the entire Greek alphabet before we reach herd immunity? Let’s try to stop this pandemic sooner rather than later. Whatever happened to “for the good of all mankind.” I’m tired of the all about me attitude. We need to protect those who legitimately can’t be vaccinated and the vulnerable population

notascalm cancer is the pits. All the needles and people prodding at you all the time about something....and one more test........and one more....and one more.....never ends once you get get it. You get tired of it.

Read about all the ICU’s overloaded with Covid19 patients. Look at the stats of those who die from COVID . I don’t have it at my fingertips so I am understating this but at least 90% are unvaccinated. No one is saying nor has ever said that the vaccine guarantees that you will not contract Covid19. No one has ever said that the vaccinated can’t spread it. Breakthrough cases in the vaccinated continue to be the exception, not the rule. Those who do have breakthroughs fare better,require fewer hospitalizations,and experience fewer deaths than the unvaccinated. This is not an all or nothing proposition. Perfection in dealing with this is quite unlikely due to the nature of viruses. You look at the data from a reputable source, period.

looks like I’m late for the party but I understand both sides of the vaccine debate.

KBL, I am not vaccinated either. I do mask indoors for my safety and others, so does DH who is also not vaccinated. In my case, I’m one of the 2% with a severe PEG/polysorbate 80 allergy, which was discovered by my first tries with 2 different chemo’s , one that caused a suspected but not confirmed seizure, big BP and oxygen drop and other crap and the 2nd that landed me in the ER with stroke level high BP and the most intense pain I’ve ever experienced. The ER doc actually told me that the last time she saw someone with my reaction, that person coded. These reactions were less than 10 seconds after the drip began, so it didn’t take much and I’m not willing to risk it when I’ve kept myself safe for 18 months now.

My anger is the virtual finger pointing and shaming, those crazy and selfish unvaccinated people ruining everything for everyone. Some people are sure, some people are always going to be a problem but others have reasons and there is little effort to understand and the hostility is getting old.

illimae - You're obviously one who cannot get vaccinated, and you wear a mask. I'm angry at people in real life who are anti-vax/anti-mask. They've protested here and disrupted vaccination sites. I'm angry at people in real life who have harassed others for trying to keep themselves and their families safe. Protesting at hospitals even. Virtual stuff is nothing compared to that.

I don't know all the reasons that people haven't been vaccinated. Some don't have access due to proximity, time, or knowledge. But I'm tired of seeing people getting sick or dying when it's preventable. That's getting old.

KBL!   YOU ARE NOT ALONE!!!  Sorry, I have been off doing other stuff and not swooping in to read as thoroughly as I should. And then so much happens and it's like, wow, that's a lot of reading to catch up on!  I have kind of jumped over several pages so forgive if my comments don't quite follow the theme - I am not entirely sure what the theme actually is. 

I heard someone describe this whole Lord Of The Flies mentality as a global pandemic of people who feel downtrodden seeing their chance to lord it over and take retribution on someone and that's what is happening. This vaccine- or- not divide is no longer a medical issue. It is a moral / mental health issue. It's the reaction of those who secretly feel powerless and want to kick some ass for it. That is a lot of what I am seeing here and everywhere. It was an interesting theory and I think it has some validity to it.

I hear the hollering. Runor! I am immune compromised. I could get covid and I might die. I want everyone in the world to stop what they're doing and worry about ME because I am just that much more important than they are. They OWE it to me to make me safe! I DESERVE everyone to get vaccinated because MY health matters MORE than their rights and freedoms. (stomping foot and jutting out lower lip).    Nope.    While we have empathy for each other and the fragile state many of us live in, I cannot find in my ethical world view an opinion of myself  so high that I think I get to lord it over anyone, for any reason. I get a whiff of narcissistic  mindset, something wickedly selfish cloaked as selfless, a wolf in sheep's clothing. I am so tired of hearing unvaxxed are causing this pandemic to continue. Let's all talk smack about them and treat them like shit, dirty bastards that they are, coughing and getting their goobers on us.  Here's something to consider for those whose minds are not yet entirely brittle with virtuous certainty:  as a largely survivable virus, had we taken our lumps and toughed it out, let the virus do what it was going to do, we might now have a virus that billions of people are immune to (which is a bonus for them and all of us, especially our kids!) and a virus that had lost some of its teeth. Instead we put up a wall of vaccinated and the virus, thwarted, upped its attack game and became a new variant. It met more vaccinated, thwarted again and became a worse variant.  Those who got vaccinated created the push for the virus to get worse.  Instead of bearing your share of global risk you side stepped that onto someone else. You let your share of viral shit roll downhill onto someone else. THe unvaxxed could look at the  vaxxed and say they were irresponsible freeloaders who did not take their share of the badness, but made it worse for everyone else. There are whole populations on this planet that are not yet vaxxed and not likely to be soon and what do we Westerners export to their impoverished shores? A virus that formerly would not have killed many of them  now a virus hell bent on destruction, made so by us shirking our share of risk  and tossing that shit out for someone else to suffer.    So, with this as a possibility, the virtue in being vaxxed can be seen as the viciousness in being vaxxed.   At this point, with many years yet to go before we know things for certain, this is just as likely to be true as any other hypothesis we argue over. 

God this is tiring. Today a guy said to me that he has a right to go to a restaurant and feel safe. No you don't. Who ever told you that? Driving to the restaurant makes you unsafe so when you accept that risk in stride, you accept all. You want no risk, then you may assign yourself no life. Your call. Not my problem. Not even a little bit. If you seriously feel unsafe in a restaurant, stay the fuck home. What he was actually saying is, I feel that I want special treatment and I will find it gratifying to see people at the next table kicked out so that I can feel superior and special.  This is mental and moral sickness. Not a health issue. In 2019 we all lived life the same way. Since when does a govt, in reaction to a not polio, not tuberculosis, not smallpox, not rabies, not ebola, not the Spanish flu virus, get to change our society with the snap of their fingers? Only if there is a great threat do we give up great things. This was NOT a great threat .  And wow, just wow, to the population of first world countries who so quickly became jackals and hyennas, ripping and tearing and blaming each other . I don't hate people who mask or vax. I hate their self granted superiority over me. They hate me. So I know exactly why KBL feels picked on and any of you claiming to not understand why she feels that way are being disingenuous and false. The tone here is that good people vax and bad people don't. Vaxxed are heroes and not vaxxed are devils. There is a debate and conversation the world needs to have, only we have not yet had it. 

I am not vaxxed. Not saying I never will be but at this moment, I am not. At this moment in time the easiest thing to do is go with the pushy and convinced crowd who KNOW FOR CERTAIN that they are right. But are they?  Time will tell. I might end up being wrong about a lot of things. You might be wrong. Humility is utterly lacking in this conversation globally.

Bravo KBL and Runor and the other voices daring to speak up.

Bravo to my girl Aprilgirl for being the kind challenger.

Its frankly a shame to see the dog piling on this thread of late. The way KBL has been spoken to by the majority of responders for daring to say something about the one sided takeover of the steam room thread is appalling. There are plenty of political safe spaces devoid of challenging to take refuge in on bc.org. The mods interfered once already in this thread not far back to ask it be taken there. I'd ask they reiterate the point.

Bc.org is great I find if you stick to the treatment threads, but I find if you venture too far away it decends to this. Very unfortunate. If I wasn't bonded to a group of women on here and if I didn't have Stage IV I'd probably leave and not come back. This sort of thing is spreading in too many places on here and really needs to stop.

KBL, my consideration was based on how people were speaking to you and how the majority seemed to have no problem with it and tried to justify it. You speaking up was a very good thing, don't apologize or doubt speaking up. I applaud you.

This thread needs to go back to its intention just as KBL said.

My home country does not have enough vaccines for everyone. There are many other countries around the world with the same problem. In the last couple of weeks, these are the sentences I have told over and over again "I am sorry for your loss", "I hope he/she (and in some cases they) gets better soon". People are traveling abroad to get the vaccine: the Astra Zeneca that we, the privileged people, consider to be inferior. The rich in the country, who can't travel for some reason, are paying up to a thousand Canadian dollars to get a shot of some smuggled Pfizer vaccine without knowing if the shot is really Pfizer or just water. Others? Just waiting hours in line to maybe get a Chinese or Russian shot. My uncle, an otherwise relatively healthy 60 something old, died of Covid a month ago. He was not fully vaccinated because his age group was not eligible yet.

Why did I write all of this? Because what angers me is that right now our accumulative efforts should have been toward providing vaccines to the rest of the world. This pandemic is not over until it is over everywhere. Instead? We are waisting valuable time and resources to convince anti vaxers (without valid medical reasons) to get the shot. Our resources are spent for those who are benefiting from the vaccine already: the fact that our health system is not at full capacity are vaccinated people and those who have complied with public health measures in the last couple of months. Being privileged and selfish is what angers me. Right now, our focus should have been pressuring the government to help the whole world getting vaccinated. Instead? Vaccines are getting expired in developed countries because officials are still hoping people will come to their senses. Unfortunately no.

And about health care system breaking down if the virus is not under control? This picture shows a glimpse into what having over capacity hospitals mean in a pandemic. Members of one family getting medication at home because the hospitals are over capacity with Covid patients right now.

Now because it is easier to think about what affects us personally, just think about a Covid variant that might not respond to the vaccine anymore, and it is more contagious and deadly than the current ones. This is what we will be dealing with unless if we go into complete lock down again.

Am I angry at those who are voluntarily not getting vaccinated? Hell yeah.

Aram - I'm so sorry. I can't imagine how you're feeling. We do need to vaccinate the world to end this pandemic. This shouldn't be political and hidden away.

SerenityStat, I’ve heard your stance loud and clear. I won’t be commenting anymore, unless I feel the need to. Unlike some, I think making my views known a few times is enough. No need to repeat. I am going to go enjoy my day.