How has the Pandemic affected you as a cancer patient/survivor

I have no sympathy for people like him. The vaccine mandate for HCW probably compelled him to get his first shot. As someone who works directly with cancer patients, he should have been first in line to be vaccinated when eligible. He better be wearing his mask at my next appointment.

I'm with Wrenn. I feel like a hardhearted witch when my compassion-o-meter barely twitches at the news of unvaxxed people who are very sick with covid. GoFundMe? I don't think so.

I just won't go to a doctor's office where they don't have a strong covid protocol with everyone vaccinated and masked. I loved that my new MO walked into my appointment room with an N95 mask and face shield in June. I'm not sure how long that will continue with their office, but everyone was masked. They also had a mask and hand sanitizer station, with contactless check-in.

My husband has Multiple Myeloma, and his first two doses of Moderna didn't take. So he just got a third dose. Fingers crossed that he gets some immunity this time. We pretty much isolate at home most of the time.

Chowdog, it seems that Colin Powell had his first two doses of Pfizer and was about to get his third when he was hit with Covid. He also had Parkinson's. It's just extremely sad. My doctor says that Moderna has the best immune response of the vaccines.

Chowdog I totally agree. It's a real mess. The ones most at risk need to look out for themselves, unfortunately.

Always,

totally agree!

My other beef is with some twitter public health & infectious disease experts. Those people should know better, but they never cared about immunocompromised people until the death of Colin Powell. All of sudden, every one of them is tweeting things like "get vaccinated for immunocompromised people". Where have they been in the past 18/19 months? Where were they when CDC dropped mask mandate in May? For example, today, I saw at least 3 covid "celebrity" experts (the media go to people) tweeting about cancer patients. Well, one of them back in Jan, advocated a "lottery" vaccination system. He wrote an oped on NYT saying the vaccine priority system was too complicated, and we should just go by age plus a lottery system once we vaccinate anybody over 55. I wrote to him and asked him to advocate for young women living with mBC. I was very professional in my email and offered some advice about why we were slow at vaccination and how we could improve the system. Guess what, I got a condescending (in my opinion) response saying "while your group is highly worthy of consideration, I've just come to believe that group by group prioritization is not feasible....". Another expert, back in July/Aug (the Delta wave), was still advocating fully vaccinated people to go maskless unless you are immunocompromised or living with someone who are immunocompromised. Today, he is tweeting "vaccines along aren't enough, they rely on the rest of us...".

All I want to do is to scream at these people. These are experts people rely on. They also have close connection with the WH covid response team, CDC & FDA. Their opeds and tweets are shared a "million" times. however, all they seem to care about "performative" tweets, opeds and soundbites to get followers, likes and book/podcast deals, and they wonder why there is a trust issue in the U.S. and we can't seem to get covid under control.

rant over.

Regarding one's “compassion meter" towards those who deliberately decide not to get the Covid19 vaccine and then become severely ill or die from the virus: I feel it's only human to develop a hard heart towards those who could have made different choices. We who got the vaccine have been pushed to the breaking point with the antivaxxers. It's called "enough". I'm not sure why I'm supposed to have compassion. Do I need to conjure up sympathy towards them to qualify me as a good person?

Since it is their life, then so be it. I could even frame it as people who are addicted to their own belief system. That addiction may kill them. But at some point, many loved ones of addicts must walk away to preserve their sanity, knowing it is only the addict who can save themselves.

Where I live, I now know of over 10 people who died this year from Covid and from their political background, I can surmise that probably none were vaccinated. But I didn't know these people personally, they are known in the community. And of course there are other Covid deaths around here of people I don't know. Now if one of my loved ones chose not to get vaccinated and then died of Covid, it would break my heart. But I cannot muster compassion for people I don't know to whom this happened. Especially the longer this goes on, the more proof that the vaccine is working and the more proof that it's the majority of the unvaccinated who are ending up dead, I mean, what are the antivaxxers waiting for?

I'm just being real here and honest.

I have more sympathy, and less anger, toward those addicted to drugs or alcohol than the unvaccinated who get Covid. Addiction is a powerful, mysterious force. Yes, an individual has to make the choice to take that first drink too many or snort that first dose of cocaine or heroin or meth. Not long after that it's the booze or the drugs making the decisions.

I'm not likely to "catch" alcoholism or drug addiction from someone. Unvaccinated people aren't making that decision purely for themselves. They put us all at risk.

I have great sympathy for addicts especially when it's pain that started their path to addiction. I had chronic pain and needed opiates to relieve it. Fortunately I no longer need them.

I've read a virologist estimate that within 6 months, she expects everyone globally will have been exposed to COVID. That's a lot of death and suffering to come. 🥺

Not sure if this site has been posted before - it does projections based on current patterns, worsening or improving mitigation ..

https://covid19.healthdata.org/global

This is not a judgment to anyone here but it does make me a bit sad to see such intolerance for those who are unvaccinated for whatever the reason. Simply being unvaccinated does not mean the person is sick or a danger to anyone, they do have to be ill and Indifferent or careless to pose a risk. Wearing a mask, distancing and good hygiene are easy enough and not have potential issues that any vaccine or treatment could cause.

A few of my vaccinated friends go to restaurants, clubs and gatherings like they’re untouchable and I choose not to be in close contact with them because it’s their behavior that is potentially dangerous, not their vaccine status. But no one wants to acknowledge that because it’s easier for everyone to blame a virus as ageist, racist and evil, kept going my maga nut jobs, rather than taking responsibility for our own actions.

"No, Vaccinated People Are Not 'Just as Likely' to Spread the Coronavirus as Unvaccinated People

This has become a common refrain among the cautious—and it's wrong"

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/...

There is a study from the UK just coming out in the past few weeks that waning immunity + delta do mean that vaccinated people can have breakthrough infections and transmission but that just means we need to increase the number of people vaccinated and dampen the cases. The fewer the number of possible hosts, the fewer the number of transmissions, the lower the number of infections among unvaccinated & breakthrough cases in vaccinated.

Whether vaccinated people should act like they're safe depends on the level of cases in their community. Fully vaccinated individuals in locations with low community case counts are probably reasonably safe.

Immuncompromised people however must take additional precautions & layer the safety tools: vaccine, masking, distancing, avoiding high risk situations, & probably avoiding high risk individuals. For me, an unvaccinated individual is high risk & masking is not always enough, esp if they're wearing cloth masks or poor quality surgical masks. Hygiene is not really the issue - covid is airborne. In all this time I don't think we've had any documented fomite transmission. What we have had though is evidence that not only is covid airborne, it can linger in the air.

If unvaxed people were living like hermits and not coming into the hospital then I wouldn't care. But going around in my community, contributing to high case counts & then swamping the ICU is something that bothers me a lot.

Illimae the difference in my view is that one is a "view" and one is a fact. The argument that both sides need to change is tiresome after all this time.

If someone has a legitimate medical reason for not being vaccinated, there is no blame. I’m fairly certain that most people understand that and don’t fault those folks in the least. Those who cannot be vaccinated should be hoping that everyone else will get vaccinated to help protect them. The blame goes to those who are not getting vaccinated because they are mis/uninformed or buy into the ridiculous conspiracy theories connected to the vaccine. The health and possibly life of your family, community and the world is at stake. When did we stop caring about the greater good?

Illimae the topic of those who choose to vaccinate vs. those who can't has been covered so many times here. The complaints are obviously with those who choose to ignore the truth. Those who don't care that they are killing people are selfish/crazy.