Alberta woman dies after being denied transplant for refusing to get COVID vaccine
Sheila Annette Lewis had an incurable disease. She was refused a transplant because she refused to get the COVID vaccine
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Trusts doctors enough to be cut open and have someone elses organ inserted into their body. Doesn't trust doctors enough to get vaccinated
The comment below by @nomadjoanne is incorrect, since a COVID-19 infection has a higher risk for myocarditis than what the vaccine can cause. However, I'm choosing to keep it up because there are a lot of comments afterwards outlining WHY it is incorrect, and that's helpful for dealing with the disinformation.
I'm open to reviewing this again if people think it should be removed anyway
The vaccine was clearly rushed into production and saved a lot of vulnerable people's lives. That does not mean it does not have risks that, for younger and healthier people, those might outweigh the benefits.
But public hysteria and groupthink dictated that it had to be coerced on people.
The vaccine underwent the exact same rigorous testing that literally every other vaccine or medication gets. The only difference is that COVID vaccines were given a free pass to the front of the line at each step necessary. As well, due to them having a much shorter timeline and higher competition, it was economical to run multiple tests in parallel that would normally have been done in series.
It wasn't "rushed" as in sloppy, it was "rushed" in that it was given priority in the various governmental queues.
Don't bother, the person your responding to has the brainpower of a fairly intelligent frog.
Being inflammatory isn't really helping the situation
What if the doctor has told me I'm not allowed to have Ibuprofen?
Thank you kind stranger!
Perfect. Just what Lemmy needed!
"inflammatory", "ibuprofen"... I see what you did there. It took me a while, but I eventually got there.
I have relatives that think the way the person you're replying to does. "There's no way it can be safe."
I was grieving their position last night (momentarily, I've accepted that they think this way but it still makes me sad). There's nothing I can do to persuade them. The fact that I've had four jabs and I'm still fine isn't worth pointing out.
I agree with a sibling comment that says it isn't worth trying to educate the willfully ignorant. However, you did a great job of saying it concisely. I appreciate you.
Ask me if my relatives have american flag iconography on their walls. Spoiler: they do. It's almost as though there's a very specific type of person who falls for this shit.
Perhaps, now that the vaccine has been around for years and there's plenty of data on its efficacy and risks, you might cite some of those risks? Because the data I've seen shows that infection is still much worse for your health than vaccination, regardless of whether or not you are "young and healthier." I would be very interested to see what data you have that shows otherwise. I quite like being proven wrong.
That does not mean it does not have risks that
The benefits outweigh the risks, even in the young and healthy, so the vaccines are recommended to everyone.
Indeed. Because the young men dropping dead from heart inflammation all were sick due to climate change.
I love how people mention heart inflammation from the vaccines, but they never talk about heart inflammation from COVID itself - it's more common with COVID itself, and it's more severe with COVID itself.
But hey, gotta hate on the vaccines, am I right?
These are the same people who argue against wearing seatbelts and mandatory airbags because they could potentially be worse than an accident without them, which is ignoring the 99.999% of the time they help.
I believe people should have a right to weigh these risks for themselves.
And the vaccine was a choice. Noone was forced to take it.
And the vaccine was a choice. Noone was forced to take it.
Many lost their jobs and in places like Canada could not leave the country for refusing to take the vaccine? It was not a choice, it was forced and those who wished to be left alone, lost basic freedoms.
Imagine you wanted to leave Canada to go to a better place, but you were denied since you needed to show a digital ID. Think about it.
The provincial superior courts and the Supreme Court have long held and being vaccinated can be a requirement of employment. The people who lost their jobs did so because they did not meet their conditions of employment. Their choice.
You have the right under Section 6 of the Charter to cross provincial borders without restriction, to live anywhere in the country you choose to, and to leave Canada and return to Canada.
You could have walked to the border and left Canada if the US would take you (it wouldn't nor would any other country). If you were outside of Canada you could have walked to to the border and entered Canada but you would probably have been required to quantine for a couple of weeks. Your rights were never in any danger you just don't understand what they are.
and to leave Canada and return to Canada
This is false. Canadians could not board planes. How can you leave the country if you were denied access to a plane ride? This did violate the Canadian charter of human rights.
Yeah the US also blocked access to the unvaxxed, the only neighbouring country to Canada. And denying access to air travel was not done to "stop the spread of COVID". It was malice, and to make excuses for this with twisted logic is quite disturbing to say the least.
Can you point to your right to fly on an airplane in the Charter? I'll wait...
Here is Section 6 to help you out.
You have no right to fly on an airplane or to ride on a train or a boat. You could have driven or walked to the border and left Canada if the US would take you. It wouldn't. You could have driven to the coast, bought a boat, and sailed to any country that you could reach by sea if they would take you. They wouldn't. You always had the right to leave Canada, you just didn't have the ability to leave Canada as a consequence of your choices.
This did violate the Canadian charter of human rights.
Do you mean the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
In the case that this article is referring to Justices Frederica Schutz, Michelle Crighton and Dawn Pentelechuk of the Alberta Court of Appeals wrote that “Ms. Lewis’ COVID-19 vaccination status is not who she is,” the court wrote. “It is not an immutable personal characteristic … her choice not to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is just that — a choice.”
What that means is that it isn't a Charter issue because it was her choice not to be vaccinated which resulted in her being lawfully denied a transplant. It is the same for people who were not vaccinated and could not fly, it was their choice and therefore not a Charter issue.
There are excellent references available on the Justice Canada website that explain exactly what the Charter does and does not mean. Avoid Facebook because that is likely how you ended up confused in the first place and avoid the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom website because they lose 99% of their cases because they are just a right wing extremist troll farm.
They do, that's why you're likely not vaccinated right now, and why people who are against it are not vaccinated.
Freedom of choice does not mean freedom from consequences of choices. If you make a bad choice, you aren't entitled to be free from the consequences of that choice.
If you run around with Covid making others sick, you do not just weigh a risk for yourself, you are also inflicting it onto others. If too many do that, society breaks because hospitals get overwhelmed, firefighters and law enforcement are sick, the grocery store has to close and the government stops working. Children are unattended and whatever else.
If you do not wear a set belt your broken body takes up a hospital bed too, or are you going to accept the weight of your decision and abstain from health care because you inflicted that harm on yourself? Be welcome to not wear a seatbelt then, but make sure to have a big sticker on your car that says: "My head injury was my choice, so do not help."
I think
Consider the billions per month alcohol and tobacco cost public health systems. We still let people do these things. Frankly I'd very much be in favor of taxing smokers more if they wanted to use the public health system.
The reality is, you just like a more controlling society as I like a more free one.
The vaccine went so fast because most of the part was already known and they had solution for other covid variants. They only needed to adapt it to attack the correct part of this covid 19 virus. It wasn't a new study. It wasn't rushed. And this person wasn't healthy but terminal. Healthy, lol.
I don't understand this logic. It had to be quickly developed because the entire world population was affected by COVID. We're talking about millions of deaths. Economies halted, everything literally went stand still and you expected the vaccine to take 3 years to develop?
I'm sure it might have sounded scary to have medicine developed so rapidly but I don't think you realize the scale at how it was developed because so many countries and companies dumped a ton of money researching a cure out the door as fast as possible.
Sure there are side-effects but in that case the side effects were worth having versus the deaths of high risk individuals.
Edit: reduced sensationalism
Sure there are side-effects but in that case the side effects were worth having versus millions of deaths
I mean, one of the most commonly mentioned side effects was something that happened in a much more serious form with a real COVID infection. It's the easiest way to meet antivaxxers in the middle if they're arguing in good faith. Even if there's a significant side effect of myocarditis, it's not nearly as common or heavy as the myocarditis die effect of an actual infection.
As I recall, all the side effects of the Covid vaccines are side effects present with other vaccines, and they are all auto-immune responses. You are at a much much greater risk of all of those if you actually caught Covid.
I suppose there is a bit of calculus involved. If you are 100 times more likely to suffer from Guillain–Barré syndrome or myocarditis if you catch a disease, but the disease is exceptionally rare, it might not make sense to get a vaccine. In Covid's case though, a substantial amount of the general population caught Covid, meaning that the overall risk was substantially reduced by being vaccinated.
Some people just seem to have trouble with risks and percentages; shades of grey rather than black or white. Getting vaccinated isnt 100% the right call, it's only 99.99+% the right call. Ironic that the same people were totally cool with a 0.5% of Covid killing them, never mind all the other severe side effects. You were asking them to make a choice between 99.99% fine vs. 90% fine or 99.9999+% non-lethal and 99.5% non-lethal. You look at the relative risks though and the vaccine was thousands of times more safe than catching Covid unvaccinated.
Any sort of medical treatment has side effects. For instance I got diabetes, you know what the side effects of using Insulin is? Death. Do you know what the side effects of untreated diabetes is? Death. Do you know what the side effect of life is? Eventually death. We are all going to get there someday, but I mean might as well stretch it out as long as possible, way I see it. There's so much I want to see, after all. Are the Leafs ever going to win the cup? Am I ever going to see retirement? Do I ever get my Corvette? This lady in the story is never going to have any of those answers, because they were too worried about side effects.
That's what I don't get about these people barking about the side effects, I mean it might kill you or make you stupid, sure (I mean it's possible, but highly unlikely). But so can falling out of bed in the morning. Or you know, COVID or whatever other disease you are trying to prevent. Was it raced out? I mean, sure. But pandemics, you know? Not a lot of time on anyones hands. And I'd say they've been pretty god damn effective. Like they removed about shutting things down and the economy and mAH freedumbs, but then they removed about racing out the vaccines, it's like shit, what can we do to make you folks happy here?
because the entire world population was dying from COVID
Okay I'm no anti vaxxer but this is just going to get you laughed at by the people you're trying to convince.
About 1% was at risk of death, and that's no small number, and we all had to get vaccinated to protect them, and that's fine. But outright stating the entire world population was dying is just laughable sensationalism.
If you want to convince people, you're never going to do it with sensationalism, especially when that sensationalism is so dramatic is flat out wrong.
Economies halted because the public freaked out. The vast, vast majority of healthy people were absolutely fine. Most of those who died, with respect, had relatively few years of life left anyway.
Society should strive to keep these vulnerable people as safe as possible. But I personally think it was incredibly unethical to shut down whole economies just for that.
Still waiting for you to cite the risks that outweigh the benefits, now that too much time has passed for you to still thing of it as “rushed”.
Standing up for bodily autonomy was the best thing one could do
Don't forget dying on that hill.
Still waiting you to cite that they don't.
This is a burden of proof fallacy right here. Classic.
They have to prove it's safe, not vice versa.
Typical leftist authoritarianism. Classic.
They already did, that was done before they launched the vaccines. You still don't think they are safe, so now it is up to you to prove why. Which you can't, because you have nothing but your feelings to show for it.
They did but it was an abridged version shall we say. Which is fine. It was an emergency and the law foresees this.
But the cultural shift towards harm avoidance at all costs and general authoritarianism (as clearly on display here on this site) led governments the world over to, use heavy handed tactics, shall we say, to get people to take it.
I am absolutely not against the vaccines. I got three doses of Pfizer. But I am profoundly against the heavy handed tactics used in deploying them.
They completed all of the normal testing. The mRNA vaccines technology is decades old. They did all of the normal testing but the stages were done in parallel and pushed ahead of everything else in the pipe. Had any stage failed the approvals would not have been given. This is an anti-vax meme but it is completely false.
I was in Spain at the beginning of the pandemic. The bodies they were stacking in the back of army trucks because their mortuary system had collapsed were not fine.
That might have happened in a few cases. I don't deny there was a real pandemic and vulnerable people were dying.
A few years ago corpses were rotting in a basement of Universidad Autónoma becauae too many people donated their bodies to science. What's your point?
Neurotic authoritarian.
You don't have the remote idea of how vaccines eradicate illnesses.
Of course I do. Your body creates antibodies to viral proteins or particles and develops memory to them. In this case the antigens are created by your own body via injected mRNA enclosed in lipids, not an injected weakened or dead viruses.
So...you proved you don't have any idea. For illnesses like COVID-19 it is key for a vaccine to be applied to as many people as possible to make it harder - in the final consequence impossible - for the disease to spread.
That's the case with a vaccine to any contagious disease. Life has trade offs. I prever not to live under an authoritarian state. I don't think hive-minded harm avoidance is the be all and end all of existence.
I mean she did not avoid harm and no one forced her to, so everything is ok. She also wasn't forced to get vaccinated, she could say no just fine which means there was no authoritarian state controlling her. Decisions come with consequences. The consequence for her was a certain death in a short timeframe.
What is wrong is to make decisions and expect others to bare the consequences, like getting a rare transplant and risking it because you could get Covid and die from it because for the transplant to work your immune system needs to be held back for some time, while someone who would have done everything possible to make this work can't get a transplant.
Also there needs to be a level of trust between a doctor and a patient, so if she gets told to take specific medication or live her life in a specific way after the surgery, she will accept the advice. She was willing to take the transplant, but did not trust the doctors with the vaccine, what would she not have trusted them with?
She had her trade off and I hope she died thinking it was worth it.
Well put. She made her choice. I doubt she accepted the consequences of her choice though. All the noise about being "denied" an organ, the fundraiser, the noise she made.
A lot of people are going to die waiting for an organ transplant, there aren't enough to go around. No one is entitled to an organ, someone has to die to donate one (other than kidneys). Her demanding an organ is condemning someone else waiting to death. It the fundamental ethical calculus of organ transplants and organ donation.
I just really get the impression that she felt entitled to an organ despite choosing not to follow all medical advice.
You know what, while I disagree, your response is well written and actually well taken.
What authoritarian state? No one has been required to get the vaccine. People just call you an idiot for not doing so.
No, you were not required to. But you were also excluded from a lot of life if you didn't. And a lot of people were foaming at the mouth and very much desirous of an outright requirement.
You're likewise excluded from a lot of you permanently walk around drunk. Still your own problem.
But you said
I prever not to live under an authoritarian state.
So what authoritarian state? Being "excluded from a lot of life" is not an authoritarian state if it was just a result of people deciding not to be around you if you made the choice to be a health risk.
Or is this like a child screaming "YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!" Just because they can?
excluded from a lot of life if you didn't.
Take personal responsibility for your shitty choices and stop crying that there are consequences.
You're either a strong individual who makes controversial choices or a quivering coward who complains about the govt. Pick a fuckin lane lol
No individual is more powerful than the state. That's sort of the point of the state. Therefore, people who value freedom, like myself, are absolutely concerned with the decisions of the state and about the consequences of living a life out-of-line with the powers that be.
To use a hyperbolic example (and I fully acknowledge that is is hyperbolic, but I want to demonstrate a point), you were free to denounce Stalin and go to the Gulag. Nobody sewed up your mouth and prevented you from doing so. As you would aptly say, there are consequences.
I didn't want to have to sit next to someone infected with infectious disease when on an airplane.
Don't blame the government, they were just implementing policies I wanted to protect me from people that had a higher probability of being a disease carrier because they get their medical advice from the internet.
"I showed up to the potluck with nothing even though I was told that I needed to bring something and expected to get the same things that everyone who brought something did, AiTA?"
“Life has trade-offs” is an interring philosophy to apply when you enjoy the benefits and others incur the costs.
There is a reason we do not let people breathe second hand cigarette smoke onto people’s faces at work.
There is a reason we apply speed limits on roads.
There is a reason that civilization has adopted rules of society that supercede the individual in every system ever devised.
The reason is that the collective has decided that being protected from the particularly terrible and wreck less decisions of the worst of us is a worthwhile “trade-off”.
Guess you can just hope to never need an organ donation!
Life has tradeoffs after all.
Someone needing an organ transplant doesn't sound like "younger" or "healthier" people.
According to your criteria, regardless of vaccine efficacy: this sounds like someone that should have been vaccinated.
This is stupid on several levels, but I ain't got time for all that so I'll just point out that this lady wasn't younger or healthier, given that she died without an organ transplant, and had she received a transplant she would be one of the vulnerable people on immunosupprressants. So even this stupid ass argument doesn't apply in this situation.
Ah yes the young healthy person who needs an organ transplant. Can't forget about that demographic.
What messed with your brain
What messed with yours?
Blocking this shit, and reporting.
You know what? It's a fucking opinion. This sort of shit is why we keep going through this over and over and over and over again. It's why everyone's so fired up.
Do I think they are absolutely wrong? Honestly, yeah I do. But trying to suppress opinions you don't agree with, using mock outrage isn't really any better. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can read this comment, shake their head and move on with their day. Screaming outrage and how dare they, supress them, block them, disinformation, report them/supress them, whatever else, honestly that makes you the fuckhead. Sorry pal.
The rest of us normies are quite capable of ignoring morons, don't worry. We don't need babysitters. The longer this sorta horseshit continues, the longer we gotta deal with all these dickheads and their signs in traffic and whatever else. Because they aren't exactly wrong in that their free speech is being suppressed. Again, I ain't saying I agree with them, but like this woman, she had the right to do what she did, and she fucked around and found out. Evidently.
"If you are not a scientist, and you disagree with scientists about science, it’s actually not a disagreement. You're just wrong."
The problem is that these wrong "opinions" are presents as fact, facts that are believed by the scared and the gullible, and they grow and gain a life of their own until someone uses them to manipulated someone who is vulnerable into literally dying instead of getting a safe, effective vaccine.
Lies and fear and hate are dangerous. Lies caused a violent mob to storm the seat of US democracy and lies caused this woman, this wife, this mother, this grandmother, this Canadian, to sacrifice herself.
The smart people have a moral obligation to reject and challenge and contradict these dangerous lies.
Another of my favorites... "Science said one thing then it said another thing. We can't trust anything science says."
"Science is not truth. Science is finding the truth. When science changes its opinion, it didn't lie to you. It learned more."
The problem is there is no chance to refute any of it if you or other mods remove it. I can't stand the conviction behind some of these beliefs but also I think its much worse to see it being removed
I'm not a mod, BTW, I'm just the OP.
The mods aren't removing everything. They have made that very clear in at least two posts. The ones where there is a good, detailed response are being left up. In one case a mod put a comment ahead of one saying, "the comment below is wrong but I'm leaving in there because the responses are good". I think the mod is doing a good job.
I'm aware. And I fully support the mods not allowing this place to turn into what r/Canada became. But it doesn't feel right to me to remove posts just based on a commenter saying some bullshit but with enough conviction to say it as a fact.
Why don't you idiots stay in your safe spaces?
It's ok to be autistic. You don't have to try and blame it on a vaccine.
Please not. I am an autist and I am vaccinated three times, waiting for the new vaccines to arrive for my fourth. Being stubborn and unwilling to learn and being autistic are two very different things. One of them is a choice the other isn't.
For many people, myself, my daughter, and many of my coworkers, autism isn't a disability, it's a superpower. Many well known big thinkers were autists. Some will known monsters were, too. Autism causes vaccines.
Im with you as someone on the spectrum. Which is why I wonder why so many people fear it to the point of blaming it on vaccines?
Meh...I let the normies have their fears and prejudices then, when the time is right, I whip out the weaponized Autism and take them by surprise.
That's what my Autistic friend calls it when one of us does something so wild that it blows the normies minds. A few weeks ago we got a late request to respond to an RFP. I had some cycles so I raised my hand. It was 516 questions, it was Friday afternoon, and we had until the next Friday to write our responses, review our responses, get the package together and to our partner so they could submit it to the customer. I told them to start working on the supporting material and leave the questions with me. I sat down on Sunday morning at 7 AM with my notebook, some dark trance music, and my two cats and wrote 504 answers over the next 30 hours. There was a HUGE scramble once they realized that I was done and they had to get their shit together and actually get it submitted. That's the power of weaponized autism.
Wow. Just wow.