90% of ICU patients admitted with COVID haven't been vaccinated.

[Desithebulldog]

Been listening to the news and they've said that 90% of the patients admitted to ICU with COVID haven't been vaccinated. For each patient admitted they are denying 10 other patients who need surgery their ICU beds. So currently (I'm sure there are more) there are 1,000 patients holding up 10,000 operations. I find this absolutely gobsmacking. Why, why, why would people not get vaccinated to help the NHS? They are on their knees and need all the help they can get. I know it's a personal choice but why are all the non-believers making it so hard for others to get a much needed operation? I just don't get it.

These comments supporting a position of ‘pro-choice’ are not really about freedom of choice at all, but are at odds with it. They are pro ‘my’ choice at the risk of anyone else. The vulnerable are at the mercy of the rest of us to make socially responsible decisions. I couldn’t step out my front donor unvaccinated and still sleep at night knowing I wasn’t just risking myself, but potentially large numbers of others. That I might survive but my neighbour might not, because of me.

By all means we should be free to make choices, but the humanist approach would be to make respectful ones. Avoid everyone else, don’t be a vector and don’t pull on the healthcare resources the majority embrace, is a position yes, but not a very practical one.

@Rachel783 I don't remember calling anyone a 'thicko', but it's always possible I've forgotten, I suppose - feel free to link me to the post where I used this term. Indeed, feel free to report it.

I disagree that calling out Covid-related misinformation is bullying. I have received umpteen ad hominem attacks on the subject despite attempting, almost all the time, to keep my tone quite measured.

The reality is, you just don't like what I'm saying.

Austria was offering half an hour at a local brothel as one of the 'incentives' to taking the jab. When do you need to coercse people into taking something thats so good

Here in England we offer pregnant mothers financial rewards (vouchers I think) to give up smoking. I don’t think incentivising vaccinations is necessarily indicative of coercion as much as recognising that there’s a proportion of people who will be motivated by a personal and immediate gain but the wider benefits of that are worth much more.

@Rachel783 - a few more thoughts:

you have stated repeated you have serious health issues confined to a wheelchair

I don’t describe myself as ‘confined’, because like many wheelchair user, I find this term offensive.

to the extent it's hard to know whether to call a psychiatrist out or exorcist

Do you consider this an acceptable way to address people online? I think if anyone can be called a bully, here, it isn't me.

You don't seem interested in any debate

I’m interested in debating anything that can be genuinely debated; I’m not going to pretend that much of this can be.

At all times in these threads I have been willing to respond to good faith questions. There just aren't many of them.

Mumsnet should be monitoring these threads properly.

@Innocenta

You clearly strongly feel that @bumbleymummy is some kind of clandestine anti vaxxer discretely sowing doubt despite her protestations that she is not an anti vaxxer.

Perhaps one way to find out the "real truth" would be to put @bumbleymummy on a ducking stool. If she drowns then clearly was not an anti vaxxer but if she survives then despite her denials then she is most definitely an evil anti vaxxer, Covid denialist, 5G conspiracy etc and should therefore be dealt with accordingly.

I thought you might approve of this approach?

The nhs is there for all , the vaccinated and the unvaccinated , along with drug addicts obese people smokers those who do dangerous sports everyone we all pay for the nhs .

[quote 17istgemagicnumber]@Innocenta you are completely right to call out Covid misinformation. Bumbleymummy on here for quite some time now. If you look on Reddit - lots of people are questioning why she’s allowed to get away with her anti vax rubbish.[/quote]
I have emailed MNHQ about their persistence in allowing Covid misinformation on the site. I agree that they are making a big mistake by being so lax - it does, unfortunately, only add to the flood of misleading 'sources' and social media noise that can so easily befuddle people who absolutely should be getting the vaccine. I've seen far too many people on these threads who don't have a concrete medical reason not to be jabbed, and would benefit, but are very sadly being stroked and encouraged into a harmful choice. I think it puts MNHQ in a very dubious moral position, frankly, when even the biggest, grim social sites have made some efforts to monitor Covid ramblings. If we as users are reporting the anti-vaxxer stuff (especially when it's leaking out from the Covid boards onto other threads too!), the least they can do is prune it.

I hope there'll be a public enquiry into the role of social media in poor vaccine uptake.

@EnidSpyton no, there’s not many trials that exclude women at all. I’m not sure where you’re getting that idea from but it’s not correct. There may be a small number of first in human trials that exclude women but that’s about sexual reproduction. You can ask male participants in these studies to withhold sexual activity that could result in pregnancy for three months whilst drugs are in development and their teratogenicity investigated, but you couldn’t ask a woman to refrain for life. All drugs where there is good evidence for efficacy have to be ultimately trialled on the population that will experience that disease and need treatment with the drug, which means there will always be women participating in trials prior to drugs being made available to the public.

@17istgemagicnumber I’ll just stay here and post my ‘antivaxx’ ‘crap’ about prioritising boosters for the vulnerable in the U.K./getting first doses out to people in developing countries and trying to encourage the uptake of the vaccine in people with higher BMIs who are currently disproportionately filling icu beds and you can head off to Reddit to bitch about me. I’ll look forward to reading your comments.

I find many of your posts offensive tantamount to bullying people

You are entitled to find my posts offensive. But I am not actually bullying you; I am not suggesting, for example, that you're in need of an exorcist. I have at no point made a derogatory statement about anyone's marriage (as has been directed at me). I could go on...

but individuals like you seem to be obsessed with controlling other peoples health in relation to the NHS yet ignore the myriad of other conditions - many of them lifestyle related which contribute to the NHS being overstretched... why is that?

@Rachel783

I am posting on the Covid board. If you want to know my thoughts on another condition, ask me.

@1dayatatime

No. I think anti-vaxxer views are promulgated by many unrelated people, whose opinions overlap with one another in some areas, but not all. (As is also very common with alternative thinking, conspiracy theories, etc.) Of course this very wide continuum will also include people with whom I may agree on other matters!

However, in a time of public health crisis, I am more inclined to speak about the negative impact of these views than I would normally be.

@Innocenta by all means call out actual misinformation but reasoned debate should be allowed and even encouraged.

@Innocenta I’m also utterly shocked at the lack of monitoring on these threads. I think there are great many people infiltrating and posting rubbish - and vulnerable people are being swayed by them. Misinformation is incredibly harmful. Just as racism is incredibly harmful.

A few months ago it was links to horrific hosting platforms like bitchute. Mumsnet seemed pretty clueless and letting the links stay. They now seem to be up to date in removing them.

Their policy is that they ‘rely’ on others to report posts. But that isn’t good enough.

@JaycDeeC “ These comments supporting a position of ‘pro-choice’ are not really about freedom of choice at all, but are at odds with it. They are pro ‘my’ choice at the risk of anyone else. The vulnerable are at the mercy of the rest of us to make socially responsible decisions.”

The vulnerable were (quite rightly) prioritised for a vaccine that significantly reduces their individual risk of serious illness. We now know that the vaccine is less effective at preventing infection/transmission to others so people are really ‘at the mercy of themselves’ - if they want to reduce their personal risk it makes more sense to have the vaccine themselves than rely on protection from others.

I doubt anyone thinks “let’s not get vaccinated, that’ll show the NHS” . People have their reasons for not getting vaccinated, valid or not and don’t not do it just to bugger things up for everyone else.

you only want to hear the sound of your own voice and report/ email anything you dislike

This is utterly untrue; in fact I report things for quite specific reasons, and usually don't report comments I personally strongly dislike.

@Rachel783