My grandmother died from covid, and my grandfather caught it and is suffering the effects. Tell me, if you wanted to save them, would you try to vaccinate every single old person in Canada? Or would you vaccinate every single person who works in a nursing home? Which is to say, are there more old people in existence? Or people who work in nursing homes?
Friendly reminder: there aren't enough vaccines to inoculate every single old person in Canada, but there is enough for all the people working in nursing homes - keep that in mind when you answer
Nursing home workers are frontline medical staff which everyone here agrees should be vaccinated first. We are talking about grocery store workers, which there is of course an argument for being prioritized, but it is a different argument to the one you are having
My point is that we need to target the vectors of infection, rather than the people we're trying to protect. It seems counterintuitive, but it actually is easier to vaccinate everyone old people come into contact with than it is to vaccinate everyone who is old or otherwise susceptible to the virus, because there are a few critical points where the virus can actually spread to them, and people staying at home are the least likely to be a vector
I don't know the math on that personally, it could be so. You'd have to factor in the number of frontline retail workers, probably the largest block of workers there is right? And then some calculation of individual risk of negative effects, cause one healthy =/= one risky. More math that I could do but presumably some epidemiologist has done that calculation and its somewhat informing policy
I'm very sorry to hear about your grandparents, I hope your grandfather has a swift recovery. My grandmother is in a nursing home so I very much hope that they get it right here.
To answer your question... I don't know. I don't have enough information. I think when you say "old people" you mean "nursing home patients", right? Otherwise the comparison wouldn't really make sense. The problem with vaccinating the staff first is that just one covid case gets into the home and now most likely all the extremely vulnerable patients have it. That could be from a staff member for whom the vaccine wasn't effective, or an electrician or paramedic or I don't know what. Does that outweigh the fact that there's more patients than staff members? Maybe? I guess the scientists think it does or we wouldn't be doing it this way.
But again this isn't my point (and in fact I'm going to stop engaging on this argument after this comment because it's not one I have a stake in). The OP was talking about a trade-off between him catching COVID and an old person catching it, not saying that vaccinating him would be a best of both worlds solution for both him and the old person
I ultimately don't really care why the OP wants it before others, I believe that the best way to protect everyone (old folk included) is to cut the pandemic at its most potent vectors - in other words people that are forced to come into contact with many other people. If the virus is able to reach the vulnerable, we have already failed. You're right in that some other outsider might bring in Covid to the nursing home, which is why I don't think that people should be visiting nursing homes during this time, unless it is absolutely critical (like life or death level emergency)
My grandmother died from covid, and my grandfather caught it and is suffering the effects. Tell me, if you wanted to save them, would you try to vaccinate every single old person in Canada? Or would you vaccinate every single person who works in a nursing home? Which is to say, are there more old people in existence? Or people who work in nursing homes?
Friendly reminder: there aren't enough vaccines to inoculate every single old person in Canada, but there is enough for all the people working in nursing homes - keep that in mind when you answer
Nursing home workers are frontline medical staff which everyone here agrees should be vaccinated first. We are talking about grocery store workers, which there is of course an argument for being prioritized, but it is a different argument to the one you are having
Sorry to hear about your grandparents.
My point is that we need to target the vectors of infection, rather than the people we're trying to protect. It seems counterintuitive, but it actually is easier to vaccinate everyone old people come into contact with than it is to vaccinate everyone who is old or otherwise susceptible to the virus, because there are a few critical points where the virus can actually spread to them, and people staying at home are the least likely to be a vector
I don't know the math on that personally, it could be so. You'd have to factor in the number of frontline retail workers, probably the largest block of workers there is right? And then some calculation of individual risk of negative effects, cause one healthy =/= one risky. More math that I could do but presumably some epidemiologist has done that calculation and its somewhat informing policy
I'm very sorry to hear about your grandparents, I hope your grandfather has a swift recovery. My grandmother is in a nursing home so I very much hope that they get it right here.
To answer your question... I don't know. I don't have enough information. I think when you say "old people" you mean "nursing home patients", right? Otherwise the comparison wouldn't really make sense. The problem with vaccinating the staff first is that just one covid case gets into the home and now most likely all the extremely vulnerable patients have it. That could be from a staff member for whom the vaccine wasn't effective, or an electrician or paramedic or I don't know what. Does that outweigh the fact that there's more patients than staff members? Maybe? I guess the scientists think it does or we wouldn't be doing it this way.
But again this isn't my point (and in fact I'm going to stop engaging on this argument after this comment because it's not one I have a stake in). The OP was talking about a trade-off between him catching COVID and an old person catching it, not saying that vaccinating him would be a best of both worlds solution for both him and the old person
I ultimately don't really care why the OP wants it before others, I believe that the best way to protect everyone (old folk included) is to cut the pandemic at its most potent vectors - in other words people that are forced to come into contact with many other people. If the virus is able to reach the vulnerable, we have already failed. You're right in that some other outsider might bring in Covid to the nursing home, which is why I don't think that people should be visiting nursing homes during this time, unless it is absolutely critical (like life or death level emergency)