Forum: Author Hangout

hopefully it will be available soon in my area.

Don't hold your breath, it is a government program.

I was afraid what they injected in me didn't work since I had no side effects.

That's a residual effect of living thru 2020. Anything that feels the slightest bit off sets off our alarms.

Then we got a call yesterday from a friend who was in that area and just drove in without an appointment. It was the first day they dropped the eligible age down to 65 from 75. Both she and her husband were given the shots. They give the Pfizer vaccine there and it has a short life after it's unfrozen so she said it wasn't busy and they probably gave them the shot instead of throwing it away.

They say that that's the best strategy, since the distribution is SO screwed up, that they're routinely throwing away the majority of the shots. Show, just showing up and waiting seems to be the best strategy (IF you don't mind standing around amongst hundreds of people who may or may not infect you. ;)

By the way, the 2nd shot is supposed to be more painful than most standard flu shots.

One of the problems Arizona had in the beginning was the people in the first group (doctors and nurses and people in nursing homes) didn't want the vaccine. I remember one VA nursing home had 98% of the old people take it, but only 13% of the staff.

Let's pick a random person in the medical profession and then consider that their interest in all things medical includes the following facts:

Thalidomide first entered the German market in 1957 as an over-the-counter remedy, based on the maker's safety claims. They advertised their product as "completely safe" for everyone, including mother and child, "even during pregnancy," as its developers "could not find a dose high enough to kill a rat." By 1960, thalidomide was marketed in 46 countries, with sales nearly matching those of aspirin.

In July of 1962, president John F. Kennedy and the American press began praising their heroine, FDA inspector Frances Kelsey, who prevented the drug's approval within the United States despite pressure from the pharmaceutical company and FDA supervisors.

The tragedy surrounding thalidomide and Kelsey's wise refusal to approve the drug helped motivate profound changes in the FDA. By passing the Kefauver-Harris Drug Amendments Act in 1962, legislators tightened restrictions surrounding the surveillance and approval process for drugs to be sold in the U.S., requiring that manufacturers prove they are both safe and effective before they are marketed. Now, drug approval can take between eight and twelve years, involving animal testing and tightly regulated human clinical trials.

On Dec. 9, 2019, three weeks before the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission announced an outbreak of a new form of pneumonia, virologist Vincent Racaniello interviewed British zoologist and president of EcoHealth Alliance Peter Daszak about his work at the nonprofit to protect the world from the emergence of new diseases and predict pandemics.

Daszak stated that researchers found that SARS likely originated from bats and then set out to find more SARS-related coronaviruses, eventually finding over 100. He observed that some coronaviruses can "get into human cells in the lab," and others can cause SARS disease in "humanized mouse models."

He ominously warned that such coronaviruses are "untreatable with therapeutic monoclonals [antibodies] and you can't vaccinate against them with a vaccine." Ironically, he claims that his team's goal was trying to find the next "spillover event" that could cause the next pandemic, mere weeks before cases of COVID-19 were beginning to be reported in Wuhan.

I'm not suggesting that the vaccines being used are ineffective or dangerous, I am simply pointing out that anyone familiar with the above might conclude that waiting is a wise choice.

And it was almost as bad with the 2nd group (first responders and teachers). What gets me about the teachers is they have had sick-outs because they're afraid to do in person teaching, but then don't take the vaccine when offered.

Since my various medical conditions put me at such risk (i.e. much more than my 90-year-old mother), I've been tracking these things for some time, and the reporting tends to pinpoint one major source of aggravation being the ENTIRE southeastern U.S. (possibly due to the Republican Governors NOT taking it serious?). So, I'm aware that it varies by state (actually, the region that I'm in is supposed much better than the rest of the state, both in supplies and compliance (i.e. mask wearing) and confrontations (between maskers and anti-maskers).

But, with many now suggesting that (at the current rates of distribution) we're not likely to see herd immunity until June of 2022, I'm guessing I'll continue social distancing for a long time to come. But then, since I'm so happy being an anti-social loner (anywhere but on writer's forums, that is), being isolated is actually more enjoyable than dealing with most people. ;)

But then, since I'm so happy being an anti-social loner (anywhere but on writer's forums, that is), being isolated is actually more enjoyable than dealing with most people. ;)

If it weren't for the virus we could shake hands ;)
I am perfectly happy remaining alone in my home and just going out for shopping once every 2 weeks. Phone and email are sufficient to keep in contact with my children and grandchildren although I did pass on a few birthdays that I would have normally attended. The whole social distancing thing didn't change much for me other than the precautions when I have to go out for food shopping.

They say that that's the best strategy, since the distribution is SO screwed up, that they're routinely throwing away the majority of the shots. Show, just showing up and waiting seems to be the best strategy (IF you don't mind standing around amongst hundreds of people who may or may not infect you. ;)

Unless you live in NY. Cuomo has threatened $1M fines on any clinic/hospital that vaccinates anyone who isn't eligible under the current priority scheme.

The vaccines have a very short shelf life once thawed, and there are 10 doses in a bottle.

If they have 11 eligible patients in a given day, that means throwing 9 doses in the garbage.

The vaccines have a very short shelf life once thawed, and there are 10 doses in a bottle.

If they have 11 eligible patients in a given day, that means throwing 9 doses in the garbage.

That's why the 'drive thru' approach seems to be successful (aside from front-line workers (i.e. those with actual jobs) and/or minorities getting access) because, with lines of cars, you can simply keep giving shots until you run out, rather than scheduling 100 people, and then delays in filling out the paperwork results in only 60 actually being innoculated.

The problem with the drive through approach in the US is nearly all the states have priorities fixed by state policy on who gets innoculated first.

With some states, they allow clinics to innoculate any available patient when they run out of priority patients, so as not to waste doses.

Then there's NY where the governor is threatening massive fines and license revocations if even a single person gets innoculated out of order.

Of course early on Cuomo also ordered COVID patients to be sent to nursing homes to keep hospital beds open. He threatened license revocations on nursing homes that didn't want to take the COVID patients.

NY has one of the over all highest death tolls and nearly half of that is nursing home patients. I wonder why.

Despite all of this a lot of people think Cuomo has done a great job managing NY's COVID response.

Despite all of this a lot of people think Cuomo has done a great job managing NY's COVID response.

The receipt of praise for management of covid is directly related to party affiliation. In NJ our governor did exactly the same thing as Cuomo and it also led to thousands of unnecessary deaths - and he gets praised for it.

You might get a kick out of this:

https://reason.com/video/2021/02/09/great-moments-in-unintended-consequences-vol-2/

The last segment is about NY/Cuomo's COVID response.

Don't hold your breath, it is a government program.

Unfortunately, despite my having multiple medical complications which put me at the 'high-risk' categories (both for catching it, dying from it and having long-term complications, since I'm two years younger than my state is currently mandating, I can't get mine.

Which is upsetting, because it appears these are the last to come around for sometime. It seems the last CIC (Comander-in-Chief) promised millions more dosages than were actually available, and most of those already shipped were ultimately thrown away (he also never set up any reporting mechanisms for which states were useless at supplying the vaccines). As a result, my region (the 'Southern' states of N.C. to Florida) are already expected to be in 'extremely short supply' until the next 'batch' are ordered, developed, shipped and distributed from the vaccine distributors.

So, I'm gonna be isolating for a long, long time. Though, my 90-year-old mother got hers (we've always said that she's gonna outlive all of her kids, since we all have multiple medical complications and she's as healthy as a Moose—as they used to say in Maine), so that's at least one thing I won't have to worry about.

Or were they?

Sorry. I wasn't suggesting that we should have more vaccines by now, I'm explicitly saying that the CIC promised more vaccine availability than has actually taken place, but again, since that varies by each state (i.e. due to the lack of a coherent national policy), it's difficult to quote actual numbers without specifying hundreds of localities.

receiving the second dose due to the severity of the side effects (the flu-like aches and chills, not the increase in WiFi connectivity or 5G reception). Reports about the first shot mirror what I've seen here - the sore arm - which is usually well-managed with Motrin and Tylenol.

I had an appointment to get the shot this week - then they cancelled me at the site on the final screening because I have had anaphylaxis in the past that led to ER visits. They told me I have to have it in a hospital setting and not the racetrack.

You can't legally force civilians to carry arms

This is not obviously true.

But even if it is generally true, an employer could make carrying arms a job requirement and well, if you won't, you're fired.

As a general legal matter, the government acting as an employer has more leeway in terms of rights, then it does acting generally as the government.

For example, the government as employer can restrict their own employee's speech in ways that wouldn't be legal as general restrictions.

But even if it is generally true, an employer could make carrying arms a job requirement and well, if you won't, you're fired.

Not if you're in the teachers union.

Not if you're in the teachers union.

If the union agreed to it they could.

The issue I'm addressing is would it be legal if they actually managed to do it, and the answer is yes.

I am not speaking to the practical politics of doing it. On that point you are right, they would have to get the union to agree to it and the odds of that happening lie somewhere between "no way" and "not a chance".

But even if it is generally true, an employer could make carrying arms a job requirement and well, if you won't, you're fired.

So, you don't want to carry a gun, and you get fired. Call the cops, or the DA, and see if they don't laugh at you.

"Did the boss threaten to beat you up or worse?"

"No? Then you're out of a job. Too bad, so sad. No laws have been broken here."

Am I the first?

First in the world, in the US, or on SOL?

As I understand it, even after the drop against infection, the protection against severe illness remains. I believe it is the same, so that is good news.

The other good news is that the infectiousness of the Delta variant in the unvaccinated is rapidly reducing the number of individuals without immune-response protection. Unfortunately, many of those individuals are experiencing more severe symptoms, a tiny faraction to the point of hospitalization. Still, one way or another, we are moving toward the point where, as a society, we can live with this infectious disease just as we do with other similar diseases.

I don't know how you can say that. There are almost as many cases/hospitalizations/deaths in the U.S. now that there were when the virus was rampant without the vaccine.

Switchblayde, I'm going to quibble a little with some things you wrote, then agree with a larger point. First, the quibbles:

First quibble: I know that things are still up in the air now, though I am uncomfortable relying on quoted statistics. Things like coding every death by someone who was positive for Covid as death due to Covid have caused me to feel great caution about relying on those statistics. The same is true for anecdotes. It's very clear that reporters (even when trying to be "fair") are as affected by confirmation bias as anyone else. When the story fits their preferred narrative, they don't ask pertinent questions. I suspect anyone who has ever been "inside" a reported story knows how mangled and mis-perceived it can be by the time it gets to newsprint (or, worse, click-bait pixels).

Second quibble: "Cases" is a very different category from "hospitalizations/deaths." Your thoughts after that point are mostly focused on the latter two categories, so this really is a quibble, but let's remember than many, probably most, "cases" are mild, last a few days at most, and result in an individual who now has resistance to the disease, adding to "herd immunity." And that's where I'm going with the "live with it" suggestion. The Spanish Flu seems to have been far worse, and the world went on. We'll go on from this, and likely without the adverse societal adjustments that have been promulgated as a response to this challenge. I very much doubt that any fair, rigorous analysis of those responses will ever be made. And, if it is, it will be forgotten or ignored by the new group in the "oh my god I've got to do something" chair the next time around.

On the other hand, I totally get the feeling that those who have chosen to abstain from being vaccinated for reasons I find unpersuasive (obviously - I'm vaccinated and will get a booster when available) are imposing unreasonable costs on society. But, I'm not sure who I want making the decision of "You get a room; you don't." I wouldn't want to be that person. The guilt of holding a room open "just in case" and then seeing someone die would be more than I could bear.

"Triage" is normally applied to situations where the immediate demand for care exceeds capacity - battles, disasters, etc. In the case where clients are presenting at the same time, some due to unvaccinated response to covid and others for different reasons and the facility had insufficient capacity, that would apply. When a facility has capacity and simply refuses because the person in need took "unnecessary risks" - it's something different. I can't think of a word that fits. It's tough on people even when it is simply impossible to serve all. (Such demands have been studied as "necessary evils" by at least one set of researchers.) When it is possible to provide care, but there is a legal requirement not to do so -- that would be devastating. "Triage" and "refusal of care" are very different propositions from a moral standpoint. Such a law would be unlikely to pass and even more difficult to enforce.

Completely agree that a wide-open "let herd immunity develop" approach would have been the wrong call. In most of the USA, states chose drastic impositions on normal life that may not have been necessary. An intermediate approach of protecting the most vulnerable while carrying on normally as much as possible might have been the sweet spot. At least one University in the US, Purdue, tried for this and it seemed to work out pretty well.

In any event, whether we learn the right lessons from the pre-vaccine response to covid remains to be seen. Although the crash program to develop the vaccines certainly seems to have been the right call, and politicians questioning the safety of such vaccines because the effort wasn't led by their guy seems to have been a very bad choice.

Now, however, we're in a very different situation. Many people have been vaccinated, others have immunity due to contracting the disease and fighting it off (with the latter group growing rapidly due to the Delta variant). We are in a different place than in March of 2020. Different analyses needs to be made, and hopefully with more thought to balance and the least disruptive but effective response

But I have a 1 1/2 yo and 3 yo great grandsons who are too young to be vaccinated.

Mine are a year or so older, so I understand. My understanding from a friend in the local hospital system is that the hospitalizations are 90% from the unvaccinated (a comfort to those of us who've taken that step to protect ourselves), and the most severe illnesses are among those over 80. And, I think you are right, we agree a great deal.

And, the good news is, it seems that even when children do contract covid, even the delta variant, the symptoms are mild and short-lived in the vast majority of cases. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/delta-variant-and-children/

So, caution, but life has to go on. And, especially, children need to be in school. The loss of a single year of learning is devastating, especially for young children, and even more for those who don't have the benefit of wealthy, educated parents.

. They want to sell vaccines at any cost to anybody they can force it on.

The media has no interest in selling vaccines. They would rather have masks and lockdowns forever.

There's something of an issue in the UK because it's been reported that as many as 1 in 7 kids who get Covid, even if it's asymptomatic, go on to suffer Long Covid.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57833394

But a team of researchers, led by the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, investigated more than 200,000 positive cases among 11 to 17-year-olds between September and March.

They think that between 4,000 and 32,000 of those were still experiencing symptoms 15 weeks later.

They think. 4000 would only be 1 in 50, but that's a ridiculously broad range of uncertainty for supposed number of cases of "long covid".

Here's how they define long covid:

extreme tiredness

shortness of breath, heart palpitations, chest pain or tightness

problems with memory and concentration ("brain fog")

changes to taste and smell

joint pain

Compare it to the list of symptoms for "gulf war syndrom"

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/gulf-war-syndrome

Fatigue

Musculoskeletal pain

Cognitive problems

Skin rashes

Diarrhea

One of the criticisms I recall coming up with "gulf war syndrome" at the time was that these symptoms are reported with no clear medical explanation at a similar rate by the general population.

Such vague, unrelated symptoms are useless without a comparison to the rates of such symptoms in the general population.

A couple of links suggesting vaccination gives broader immunity than having been infected:

That's for adults. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that it would be different for children.

ETA:

Another problem with the "long covid" symptoms, most of them can be stress induced.

And anyone who thinks the pandemic and the response to it haven't been stressful for kids needs to have their head examined.

32,000 would be 1 in 6, which is not too dissimilar to earlier fears of 1 in 7. Unfortunately I don't have a link for the 1 in 7 claim.

True, if they actually had that many cases, which I doubt.

The order of magnitude level of uncertainty in the number of "long covid" cases should be a huge red flag that the study is nonsense.

If we take the mid point of the rang they give for number of cases, that would be 1 in 11.

And again, nearly all the symptoms they list as defining "long covid":

1. occur in the general population without a determinable medical cause, and this has been the case since long before the current pandemic.
2. can result from stress.

There is simply no valid medical reason to attribute those symptoms to covid.

so obviously they're just made up, right?

That depends on who paid for the research. Nowadays accurate 'results' are rare.

We haven't achieved herd immunity to the common cold despite giving it free rein, and it's likely we'll never achieve herd immunity to Covid.

Yes and no. We don't have the level of immunity that would result in the cold going extinct.

On the other hand, we have a great deal of resistance to it, such that no one dies or even gets all that seriously sick from it unless they have otherwise compromised immune system.

A second head, and being so hip you have difficulty seeing over your pelvis, will have you so cool you could keep a side of beef in you for a month.

HHGG quote