Interesting New Doctor Policy

My family doctor is part of a large 6-doctor family practice center. I had an appointment yesterday. At the door was a sign: Covid Testing/Patients Only. The conversation eventually got on to Covid. My doctor mentioned that there is a new page on their new patient application. It has extensive questions about a prospective patients views on vaccines. If the answers indicate the person is an anti-vaxer they reject the patient (doesn't fit in with the philosophy of the practice). He also described a great cartoon: a giant scale. On one side: 98.4% of physicians/scientists recommend getting the Covid vaccine. On the other side: one uneducated antivaxer. The caption: EQUAL? Before some of you get up in arms, it was funny and certainly an EDITORIAL.

Anyway, a very interesting doctor visit.

Mel

Being a bit sarcastic, but do they also reject overweight diabetics, smokers, people that have used recreational drugs and people that are slightly more than moderate drinkers? Looks like they may be thinning the population of people to treat. Maybe they should accept the unvaccinated and work properly to persuade them to vaccinate. I do agree, however, that except in an emergency situation, a doctor in private practice can decide who to accept and who to reject as patients; just as I have the ability to choose or reject any doctor for whatever reason I choose. I like freedom of choice. I lived many years in situations where I had little or no choice on such things.

It remains that there are many people including doctors that are not “anti-vaxers” that have reasons not to take the current vaccinations at this time as they are not fully FDA approved and do not come with the many years of testing that traditionally vaccines have endured or who have current natural immunity from prior COVID infections. A close friend of mine is a very smart doc in his mid 40’s who had Covid earlier this year as did his entire family. He tests for the antibodies each month and remains strong. He has said he will take the Novavax as it is made in the traditional way of our most common flu vaccines that have decades of experience.

Unfortunately Novavax has not completed the initial USA clinical trials to gain emergency status with the FDA. Since it did not partner with Big Pharma like Pfizer or the government as did the long time partnership between the NIH and Moderna, it has not enjoyed the financial scale required to fast track the trials. It is expected to present data in the EU in October. Also unfortunate is that the thousands of Americans that are in the trial and been vaccinated are not counted for vaccine status. Rather they are lumped in with “anti-vaxers”. Even Dr. Robert Malone (invented the sequencing that led to the mRNA method), says the Novavax will prove to be the best and will solve a great deal of the vaccine hesitancy as it is not novel. He had a horrendous reaction to the Moderna that has induced permanent high blood pressure that he is struggling to manage.

@Mel - I like your doctor! Many of our local health care systems and providers (even here in Florida) are insisting that their employees be vaccinated as a condition of employment. It's so unfortunate that it takes that to get people to do the right thing but so be it. I certainly support their efforts.

@Jack - once again you and I are in sharp disagreement on this subject. What is disturbing to me is that smart guys like you (who have been vaccinated) continue to be apologists for the nutty anti-vax crowd who are just looking for reasons not to be vaccinated. And quoting Malone is unfortunate. He is a darling of the fringe media, a purveyor of misinformation about the vaccines and a bitter soul who feels his "accomplishments" have not been properly recognized. It is totally unclear whether the Moderna vaccine caused any of Malone's problems; more likely it's hangover from his COVID case. I know I am not going to convince you of anything but I can't and won't let you spread this sort of stuff on our forum w/o response.

Jim

So, are you going to enforce this for all other communicable disease vaccinations?

F8 said...
let's face it, the carrot didn't work. time to break out the stick.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/opinion/health-insurance-unvaccinated.html

I guess the city of Tucson is using a carrot and a stick. All city of Tucson employees have been mandated for the vaccine. In return for doing so, they get $300 dollars and two extra days of vacation. Plus, they get to keep their jobs.

alephnull said...
So, are you going to enforce this for all other communicable disease vaccinations?

In general, I would say yes to any communicable diseases that are running rampant at any given time. I'm not sure how I feel about doctors turning away the anti-vax crowd. I'm of the opinion that maybe a caring doctor might hold more sway in getting these folks vaccinated.

However, my son in law (Nurse practitioner in local ER) is working 7 days a week right now. That particular hospital is totally out of ventilators. They are placing patients on oxygen and putting them back out in the lobby because there is nowhere else to put them. He is bone tired and weary of hearing the anti-vax non-sense. He's tired of hearing that the guy he admitted last night/last week didn't make it. Or that he made it, but he has any number of long term debilitating problems. The medical professionals working this crisis are no longer touted as "healthcare heroes". Now they're being called liars and accused of "making things up" by anti-vaxxers, anti-science, covid deniers. We are worried that he is wearing himself to the point where he may become ill. We need to be aware that real-live human people are killing themselves to keep our friends, family and neighbors well. And it's mostly preventable.

I'm all for personal freedoms, unless those freedoms impact someone else's right to not die from a preventable disease. It's kind of like smoking in public. If you want to smoke, that's certainly your right. It's also the right of the other folks you'll come into contact with not to breathe that second hand smoke. As a result, smoking is no longer allowed in most public places.

I hope this doesn't come off as mean-spirited. This is a public health crisis. It's not (or shouldn't) have anything to do with politics. Thanks for the vent.

**Steps off soapbox**

What we're seeing now is the gradual weight of "the public" losing patience with the anti-vaxxers, and slowly pushing them into isolation without the weight of the law doing it. Businesses large and small, medical offices, restaurants, universities, and on and on. I note that like smoking, the law followed public practice, it did not drive it. Something similar is happening here.

The downside, of course, is that it will take a lot longer this way, and a lot of people will be dying in the mean time.

There will come a point where it is just as socially unacceptable to be unvaxxed as it is to blow smoke in someone's face.

I also find it more than a little ironic that many of the people who are up in arms about employers and businesses requiring vaccines of employees and customers are those who whole heartedly support employment at will and the right of businesses to refuse service to anyone for any reason.

Finally, the tide is turning.

Mel

compiler said...
Finally, the tide is turning.

Mel

Even in the Medical community…


https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-08-17/vaccinated-covid-doctor-shot

Self-Inflicted Genocide. If they could just find a way to not take a few people with them.

@Redwing-- Allow me to go on the record that I totally disagree with your definition of selfishness with regard to vaccination against Covid. Love your neighbor: Get vaccinated.

And here is an article that basically says that the paper you quoted is wrong.https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/08/16/a-new-antibody-dependent-enhancement-hypothesis[url]

Quoting from this source: "...the Yahi et al. paper is not aligned with reality. They do work in a line about how “although the results obtained so far have been rather reassuring. . .” with a reference to the Li et al. paper, but they should also refer to the massive amount of real-world evidence now available. We have hundreds of millions of people who have been vaccinated to produce antibodies against the non-Delta coronavirus protein domains and are who are now being exposed to the Delta variant. To reiterate, there is (to the best of my knowledge) no evidence whatsoever of ADE in this situation. In fact, we see the opposite: people who have been vaccinated are far less likely to become infected with the Delta variant, and if they become infected, they are far less likely to experience severe disease. These trends have been seen over and over in different populations, and they are the exact opposite of what you would see if ADE were operating."

I'm persuaded that ADE is another bogeyman. I'm particularly impressed that there is no wide spread ADE issue despite the fact that the delta variant is wide spread and hundreds of millions of people have been vaccinated w/o ADE raising its' head. Gotta use common sense sometimes.

One can always find a reason not to get the vaccine, "freedoms", "fear of the unknown", "not tested enough", "ADE", etc. Tomorrow the FDA will give full approval to the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna approval will follow shortly thereafter. What's the excuse then?

Jim