Coronavirus

[CatB]

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/m...des-2020-12/slides-12-20/02-COVID-Dooling.pdf

While it is wildly unfair to characterize CDC’s preparedness/support with this one document, by itself, it suggests they started looking at mortality and morbidity data based on the data they had mid-summer, and came up with an obvious answer for how to prioritize the sequencing (but not how to implement it!?) ...six. Months. Later.
Unless there were other studies developing specific implementation approaches simultaneously (distribution, logistics, comms, governance, etc.) no wonder implementation has been a cluster-frenzy in many places. (“Look we got vaccines, I know, let’s give them to our rich work-at-home executives and big donors!”)

 

[bkp_duke]

While it is wildly unfair to characterize CDC’s preparedness/support with this one document, by itself, it suggests they started looking at mortality and morbidity data based on the data they had mid-summer, and came up with an obvious answer for how to prioritize the sequencing (but not how to implement it!?) ...six. Months. Later.
Unless there were other studies developing specific implementation approaches simultaneously (distribution, logistics, comms, governance, etc.) no wonder implementation has been a cluster-frenzy in many places. (“Look we got vaccines, I know, let’s give them to our rich work-at-home executives and big donors!”)

What just about everyone keeps forgetting is that vaccine administration, once it is delivered to states, is 100% on the states to coordinate.

This has been a HUGE @#$% show in some states.

I'll give a personal example:
My wife and I both fall under Tier 1A/B for vaccine administration in CA state. She's a vet, actively doing house calls (relatively high risk). I'm a retired physician, but do some locum tenens work occasionally, so I'm considered a "reserve" to be called up if needed. Most physicians are getting vaccinated at their place of work, but because we are both independent contractors, we do not qualify for that, so both of us this week went to get our first vaccine dose at the SD Health Department. I was THIRD in line when they opened up, there were maybe 10 people behind me. Things were supposed to start at 9:30 (that's a really late time to start something like this), but no one actually got setup and started talking to the healthcare workers in line until 10:00. I pre-filled out the paperwork in advance online, but that didn't matter as they made me fill out everything again, on paper, by hand (clipboard). They asked the same set of questions 3 times, by 3 different people, in addition to having me write answers to them out. After 2 hours, I finally got my shot.

My wife was even less lucky, as she worked late the night before so she went later in the day. She was FIRST in line when she got there, but because she was "on the wait list" had to wait till the very end of the day till after everyone that had an appointment had a chance to be vaccinated. In 4 hours, she watched 8 people TOTAL go through the doors and come out to get vaccinated. After the appointments were up, she was 2nd in line on the wait list, and it still took over an hour for her to get her shot.

I have done some vaccine clinics, and usually we process a thousand or more per day, per site, when we do them. What I saw was an unacceptable pace for vaccination. And this is the HEALTH DEPARTMENT, an entity that routinely administers vaccinations and should have this running like a well-oiled machine, since vaccine was first delivered in SD county almost a month ago.


By contrast, my father is 77 and in good health. He lives in a state on the opposite side of the country. They have vaccinated 100% of their healthcare force over the past month, and are now moving on to seniors and those with chronic medical conditions. The pace of vaccine administration has been substantially higher.


The difference is how states are implementing their vaccine administration. YES, the vaccine could be delivered faster to states, but some states have not planned their vaccine administration out at all and are still sitting on a substantial number of doses.


IMO, the National Guard should be administering vaccine. They are setup and trained for "humanitarian relief" and could accelerate deployment of the vaccine. The one downside to this is that the National Guard is controlled 100% by states and called up by state governors, not the federal government. So we will be at the will of individual governors to actually implement a plan like this.

 

[EVCollies]

What just about everyone keeps forgetting is that vaccine administration, once it is delivered to states, is 100% on the states to coordinate.

This has been a HUGE @#$% show in some states.

I'll give a personal example:
My wife and I both fall under Tier 1A/B for vaccine administration in CA state. She's a vet, actively doing house calls (relatively high risk). I'm a retired physician, but do some locum tenens work occasionally, so I'm considered a "reserve" to be called up if needed. Most physicians are getting vaccinated at their place of work, but because we are both independent contractors, we do not qualify for that, so both of us this week went to get our first vaccine dose at the SD Health Department. I was THIRD in line when they opened up, there were maybe 10 people behind me. Things were supposed to start at 9:30 (that's a really late time to start something like this), but no one actually got setup and started talking to the healthcare workers in line until 10:00. I pre-filled out the paperwork in advance online, but that didn't matter as they made me fill out everything again, on paper, by hand (clipboard). They asked the same set of questions 3 times, by 3 different people, in addition to having me write answers to them out. After 2 hours, I finally got my shot.

My wife was even less lucky, as she worked late the night before so she went later in the day. She was FIRST in line when she got there, but because she was "on the wait list" had to wait till the very end of the day till after everyone that had an appointment had a chance to be vaccinated. In 4 hours, she watched 8 people TOTAL go through the doors and come out to get vaccinated. After the appointments were up, she was 2nd in line on the wait list, and it still took over an hour for her to get her shot.

I have done some vaccine clinics, and usually we process a thousand or more per day, per site, when we do them. What I saw was an unacceptable pace for vaccination. And this is the HEALTH DEPARTMENT, an entity that routinely administers vaccinations and should have this running like a well-oiled machine, since vaccine was first delivered in SD county almost a month ago.


By contrast, my father is 77 and in good health. He lives in a state on the opposite side of the country. They have vaccinated 100% of their healthcare force over the past month, and are now moving on to seniors and those with chronic medical conditions. The pace of vaccine administration has been substantially higher.


The difference is how states are implementing their vaccine administration. YES, the vaccine could be delivered faster to states, but some states have not planned their vaccine administration out at all and are still sitting on a substantial number of doses.


IMO, the National Guard should be administering vaccine. They are setup and trained for "humanitarian relief" and could accelerate deployment of the vaccine. The one downside to this is that the National Guard is controlled 100% by states and called up by state governors, not the federal government. So we will be at the will of individual governors to actually implement a plan like this.

Agree, the experience varies between states and also between healthcare systems. We have already vaccinated all healthcare workers and moved onto age > 70, as of Wed invitations to vaccinate have been sent to 45K seniors, over half of our registry in this age group. Invitations are sent as we receive more vaccine.

I've been volunteering at the vaccine clinics, each clinic gets a bit more streamlined but we struggle with staffing and some clinics have been canceled. We are actively recruiting staff as too difficult to rely on volunteers or employees willing to take extra shifts.

 

[madodel]

What just about everyone keeps forgetting is that vaccine administration, once it is delivered to states, is 100% on the states to coordinate.

This has been a HUGE @#$% show in some states.

I'll give a personal example:
My wife and I both fall under Tier 1A/B for vaccine administration in CA state. She's a vet, actively doing house calls (relatively high risk). I'm a retired physician, but do some locum tenens work occasionally, so I'm considered a "reserve" to be called up if needed. Most physicians are getting vaccinated at their place of work, but because we are both independent contractors, we do not qualify for that, so both of us this week went to get our first vaccine dose at the SD Health Department. I was THIRD in line when they opened up, there were maybe 10 people behind me. Things were supposed to start at 9:30 (that's a really late time to start something like this), but no one actually got setup and started talking to the healthcare workers in line until 10:00. I pre-filled out the paperwork in advance online, but that didn't matter as they made me fill out everything again, on paper, by hand (clipboard). They asked the same set of questions 3 times, by 3 different people, in addition to having me write answers to them out. After 2 hours, I finally got my shot.

My wife was even less lucky, as she worked late the night before so she went later in the day. She was FIRST in line when she got there, but because she was "on the wait list" had to wait till the very end of the day till after everyone that had an appointment had a chance to be vaccinated. In 4 hours, she watched 8 people TOTAL go through the doors and come out to get vaccinated. After the appointments were up, she was 2nd in line on the wait list, and it still took over an hour for her to get her shot.

I have done some vaccine clinics, and usually we process a thousand or more per day, per site, when we do them. What I saw was an unacceptable pace for vaccination. And this is the HEALTH DEPARTMENT, an entity that routinely administers vaccinations and should have this running like a well-oiled machine, since vaccine was first delivered in SD county almost a month ago.


By contrast, my father is 77 and in good health. He lives in a state on the opposite side of the country. They have vaccinated 100% of their healthcare force over the past month, and are now moving on to seniors and those with chronic medical conditions. The pace of vaccine administration has been substantially higher.


The difference is how states are implementing their vaccine administration. YES, the vaccine could be delivered faster to states, but some states have not planned their vaccine administration out at all and are still sitting on a substantial number of doses.


IMO, the National Guard should be administering vaccine. They are setup and trained for "humanitarian relief" and could accelerate deployment of the vaccine. The one downside to this is that the National Guard is controlled 100% by states and called up by state governors, not the federal government. So we will be at the will of individual governors to actually implement a plan like this.

My wife's hospital is desperate to find staff to administer vaccines. Their staff is so affected by COVID at this point my wife said an open heart was delayed from Friday to Monday because there were no qualified OR nurses to scrub in. I've heard that non-clinical nurses are working on the floors because the staff nurses are either out with COVID or in quarantine because of contact. One of them is trying to talk me into volunteering to administer vaccinations but I retired my license 30+ years ago.

 

[bkp_duke]

My wife's hospital is desperate to find staff to administer vaccines. Their staff is so affected by COVID at this point my wife said an open heart was delayed from Friday to Monday because there were no qualified OR nurses to scrub in. I've heard that non-clinical nurses are working on the floors because the staff nurses are either out with COVID or in quarantine because of contact. One of them is trying to talk me into volunteering to administer vaccinations but I retired my license 30+ years ago.

Here in SD County they are taking about doing 1-day training to 50-100 firefighters on IM injections to get them to help with vaccinations.

 

[JRP3]

Here in NY I think we start vaccinating anyone 75 and older next week.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

What just about everyone keeps forgetting is that vaccine administration, once it is delivered to states, is 100% on the states to coordinate.

This has been a HUGE @#$% show in some states.

I'll give a personal example:
My wife and I both fall under Tier 1A/B for vaccine administration in CA state. She's a vet, actively doing house calls (relatively high risk). I'm a retired physician, but do some locum tenens work occasionally, so I'm considered a "reserve" to be called up if needed. Most physicians are getting vaccinated at their place of work, but because we are both independent contractors, we do not qualify for that, so both of us this week went to get our first vaccine dose at the SD Health Department. I was THIRD in line when they opened up, there were maybe 10 people behind me. Things were supposed to start at 9:30 (that's a really late time to start something like this), but no one actually got setup and started talking to the healthcare workers in line until 10:00. I pre-filled out the paperwork in advance online, but that didn't matter as they made me fill out everything again, on paper, by hand (clipboard). They asked the same set of questions 3 times, by 3 different people, in addition to having me write answers to them out. After 2 hours, I finally got my shot.

My wife was even less lucky, as she worked late the night before so she went later in the day. She was FIRST in line when she got there, but because she was "on the wait list" had to wait till the very end of the day till after everyone that had an appointment had a chance to be vaccinated. In 4 hours, she watched 8 people TOTAL go through the doors and come out to get vaccinated. After the appointments were up, she was 2nd in line on the wait list, and it still took over an hour for her to get her shot.

I have done some vaccine clinics, and usually we process a thousand or more per day, per site, when we do them. What I saw was an unacceptable pace for vaccination. And this is the HEALTH DEPARTMENT, an entity that routinely administers vaccinations and should have this running like a well-oiled machine, since vaccine was first delivered in SD county almost a month ago.


By contrast, my father is 77 and in good health. He lives in a state on the opposite side of the country. They have vaccinated 100% of their healthcare force over the past month, and are now moving on to seniors and those with chronic medical conditions. The pace of vaccine administration has been substantially higher.


The difference is how states are implementing their vaccine administration. YES, the vaccine could be delivered faster to states, but some states have not planned their vaccine administration out at all and are still sitting on a substantial number of doses.


IMO, the National Guard should be administering vaccine. They are setup and trained for "humanitarian relief" and could accelerate deployment of the vaccine. The one downside to this is that the National Guard is controlled 100% by states and called up by state governors, not the federal government. So we will be at the will of individual governors to actually implement a plan like this.

My mom works for a dialysis center, and she got her first dose last week. She didn't have as much trouble as you did, but you're right that it should've been much faster than this. I wonder if it's to prevent PR disasters like the standard case where some administrators managed to get vaccines before the doctors and nurses? On the bright side, at least you got your first dose. My wife, a retail pharmacist, has no idea when she'll get hers.

 

[bkp_duke]

My mom works for a dialysis center, and she got her first dose last week. She didn't have as much trouble as you did, but you're right that it should've been much faster than this. I wonder if it's to prevent PR disasters like the standard case where some administrators managed to get vaccines before the doctors and nurses? On the bright side, at least you got your first dose. My wife, a retail pharmacist, has no idea when she'll get hers.

As a retail pharmacist, your wife is in Tier 1A/1B for sure and can get the shot now. She will need to find locally some facility that is doing that (usually health dept), and have her credentials ready (state license ID), but she should be able to get it.

There is no excuse in CA for this slow roll-out. I would rather a few admins sneak under the radar and with the trade off of hundreds of thousands of more people being vaccinated at this point, than what we see currently.

 

[TEG]

There was some fuss in the local paper when some med students at the big university got first round shots even though they never saw patients.
They defended their stance by saying that the vials had more doses than suggested and the university just rushed a "first come, first served" memo to the department to use what they had before it expired.
(Once thawed it needs to be used up relatively quickly.)

This sort of "hey no fair !" situation may be causing some to be overly careful and bureaucratic about the distribution now causing it to move too slowly.

 

[wdolson]

Way back when COVID was new(ish), and I first started posting in this thread, I started off by posting some "news/rumors" that China may have been trying to cover up the origins and I got slammed for spreading "conspiracy theories", and told "now is not the time to start an investigation"... and we should "wait until we get the virus under control before circling back to study where it came from..." So new conspiracy theory: maybe they were trying to convince people to not investigate until they had time to cover up whatever they didn't want found, and prepare a response to any questions that get raised...?

If there is any sort of cover-up it might be as simple as not wanting to admit an embarrassing lab mistake, or even to plant doubt that the virus even originated in China at all.
If there is some some intention behind it, I doubt we will ever find out.

One possible "mistake" could be that the virus was among many collected from bat caves in an out of the way place where it may not have spread (at least not right away) but was brought into the city to be studied and somehow got released. So a possible theory is that we accidentally accelerated its' leap from animals to humans. So some well intentioned effort could have caused things to be worse than they would have on their own. Say for instance it was an old strain in the research labs that would have naturally died out in the bats but we kept it around for research purposes.

I think there is scientific consensus the virus itself is likely of natural origin originally. But there is always a question of how it ended up spreading from Wuhan. I think the PR efforts were successful in getting everyone to drop the "Wuhan Flu" moniker it once had.

I did hear a story purportedly from a lab tech at the Wuhan virology lab that sometime in late 2018 or early 2019 there was an incident late one morning where several lab techs got sprayed with urine from a test animal. They did some clean up, but soon after went to lunch at the wet market, which was a common lunch spot for the lab workers.

It's not a verified story, so it may just be fiction, but that is a plausible scenario for animals getting infected in the market and the critical species jump happening.

What just about everyone keeps forgetting is that vaccine administration, once it is delivered to states, is 100% on the states to coordinate.

This has been a HUGE @#$% show in some states.

I'll give a personal example:
My wife and I both fall under Tier 1A/B for vaccine administration in CA state. She's a vet, actively doing house calls (relatively high risk). I'm a retired physician, but do some locum tenens work occasionally, so I'm considered a "reserve" to be called up if needed. Most physicians are getting vaccinated at their place of work, but because we are both independent contractors, we do not qualify for that, so both of us this week went to get our first vaccine dose at the SD Health Department. I was THIRD in line when they opened up, there were maybe 10 people behind me. Things were supposed to start at 9:30 (that's a really late time to start something like this), but no one actually got setup and started talking to the healthcare workers in line until 10:00. I pre-filled out the paperwork in advance online, but that didn't matter as they made me fill out everything again, on paper, by hand (clipboard). They asked the same set of questions 3 times, by 3 different people, in addition to having me write answers to them out. After 2 hours, I finally got my shot.

My wife was even less lucky, as she worked late the night before so she went later in the day. She was FIRST in line when she got there, but because she was "on the wait list" had to wait till the very end of the day till after everyone that had an appointment had a chance to be vaccinated. In 4 hours, she watched 8 people TOTAL go through the doors and come out to get vaccinated. After the appointments were up, she was 2nd in line on the wait list, and it still took over an hour for her to get her shot.

I have done some vaccine clinics, and usually we process a thousand or more per day, per site, when we do them. What I saw was an unacceptable pace for vaccination. And this is the HEALTH DEPARTMENT, an entity that routinely administers vaccinations and should have this running like a well-oiled machine, since vaccine was first delivered in SD county almost a month ago.


By contrast, my father is 77 and in good health. He lives in a state on the opposite side of the country. They have vaccinated 100% of their healthcare force over the past month, and are now moving on to seniors and those with chronic medical conditions. The pace of vaccine administration has been substantially higher.


The difference is how states are implementing their vaccine administration. YES, the vaccine could be delivered faster to states, but some states have not planned their vaccine administration out at all and are still sitting on a substantial number of doses.


IMO, the National Guard should be administering vaccine. They are setup and trained for "humanitarian relief" and could accelerate deployment of the vaccine. The one downside to this is that the National Guard is controlled 100% by states and called up by state governors, not the federal government. So we will be at the will of individual governors to actually implement a plan like this.

Here in the southern part of Washington, we're in the Portland media region, so we get more news from Oregon than Washington. On the radio yesterday they were talking about the specific problems vaccinating people in Oregon. With the Pfizer vaccine specifically a box of vaccine must all be used in a very short window of time. To keep from wasting any vaccine, the coordinators are waiting until they have enough people lined up to get an entire box of vaccine before they take it out of deep freeze and getting enough people lined up at one time has some logistical problems that cause delays.

Frequently one extra dose can be coaxed from a vial and they need to find an unvaccinated arm to stick it in.

I also heard in New York Cuomo did an executive order that anyone who wasn't in the tier being vaccinated got a shot, the people giving the shots could face a million dollar fine. New York is facing the same logistical issues Oregon is with the Pfizer vaccine. Now there is a financial risk to anyone who tries to make use of an extra dose can can't find anyone in the current tier.

Logistics are always tough and state governments don't have any experience with large scale logistics. The US military's medical corps should be coordinating and advising every state, but there is no leadership at the top. The military practices logistics on a regular basis. They are one of the few organizations with the institutional knowledge to pull off something like a rapid vaccination campaign across the country all at once.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

As a retail pharmacist, your wife is in Tier 1A/1B for sure and can get the shot now. She will need to find locally some facility that is doing that (usually health dept), and have her credentials ready (state license ID), but she should be able to get it.

There is no excuse in CA for this slow roll-out. I would rather a few admins sneak under the radar and with the trade off of hundreds of thousands of more people being vaccinated at this point, than what we see currently.

Why is it through the health dept and not the pharmacy itself? That's how my mom got hers (through the dialysis center that employs her).

 

[bkp_duke]

Why is it through the health dept and not the pharmacy itself? That's how my mom got hers (through the dialysis center that employs her).

The large pharmacies have stock and should be vaccinating their employees, but the small ones do not. Especially if it is the Pfizer vaccine with it's -80 F refrigeration requirements.

 

[cwerdna]

This has been a HUGE @#$% show in some states.

I'll give a personal example:
My wife and I both fall under Tier 1A/B for vaccine administration in CA state. She's a vet, actively doing house calls (relatively high risk). I'm a retired physician, but do some locum tenens work occasionally, so I'm considered a "reserve" to be called up if needed. Most physicians are getting vaccinated at their place of work, but because we are both independent contractors, we do not qualify for that, so both of us this week went to get our first vaccine dose at the SD Health Department. I was THIRD in line when they opened up, there were maybe 10 people behind me. Things were supposed to start at 9:30 (that's a really late time to start something like this), but no one actually got setup and started talking to the healthcare workers in line until 10:00. I pre-filled out the paperwork in advance online, but that didn't matter as they made me fill out everything again, on paper, by hand (clipboard). They asked the same set of questions 3 times, by 3 different people, in addition to having me write answers to them out. After 2 hours, I finally got my shot.

My wife was even less lucky, as she worked late the night before so she went later in the day. She was FIRST in line when she got there, but because she was "on the wait list" had to wait till the very end of the day till after everyone that had an appointment had a chance to be vaccinated. In 4 hours, she watched 8 people TOTAL go through the doors and come out to get vaccinated. After the appointments were up, she was 2nd in line on the wait list, and it still took over an hour for her to get her shot.

I have done some vaccine clinics, and usually we process a thousand or more per day, per site, when we do them. What I saw was an unacceptable pace for vaccination. And this is the HEALTH DEPARTMENT, an entity that routinely administers vaccinations and should have this running like a well-oiled machine, since vaccine was first delivered in SD county almost a month ago
...
IMO, the National Guard should be administering vaccine. They are setup and trained for "humanitarian relief" and could accelerate deployment of the vaccine. The one downside to this is that the National Guard is controlled 100% by states and called up by state governors, not the federal government. So we will be at the will of individual governors to actually implement a plan like this.

As a CA resident hundreds of miles away from you, that is extremely disturbing. For those outside CA and those who might unaware, the So Cal region of CA per About COVID-19 restrictions - Coronavirus COVID-19 Response is currently at 0% available ICU capacity.

Can you and/or wife inform the local media about your situation, if it hasn't been brought up in local news already? People's feet need to be put to the fire and in the crisis (massive infections and daily deaths) we are facing, that glacial pace is INSANITY.

If more of the powers that be are aware of the horrible situation there, maybe someone else can pick up the ball and get it going. We can't be wasting time like this!

 

[TEG]

Santa Clara county vaccination tier descriptions:
County of Santa Clara COVID-19 Vaccine Information for the Public - Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) - County of Santa Clara
( Currently in 1A... )

 

[bkp_duke]

As a CA resident hundreds of miles away from you, that is extremely disturbing. For those outside CA and those who might unaware, the So Cal region of CA per About COVID-19 restrictions - Coronavirus COVID-19 Response is currently at 0% available ICU capacity.

Can you and/or wife inform the local media about your situation, if it hasn't been brought up in local news already? People's feet need to be put to the fire and in the crisis (massive infections and daily deaths) we are facing, that glacial pace is INSANITY.

If more of the powers that be are aware of the horrible situation there, maybe someone else can pick up the ball and get it going. We can't be wasting time like this!

I'm not one that likes the public lime-light, but my wife has been sharing her experience on social media, and did push the CA Vet groups to push for some changes (vets were in line with the general public - all other states had them with health care providers because they are considered "essential").

There are some private groups that are going to be doing drive-up vaccination for healthcare workers (UC SD), which should accelerate the pace significantly.

 

[JRP3]

Grimes has Covid, and seems to be using Elon's "treatment" of Dayquil
Grimes reveals she 'finally got COVID' is 'weirdly enjoying' the experience

 

[Slipstream]

What just about everyone keeps forgetting is that vaccine administration, once it is delivered to states, is 100% on the states to coordinate.

This has been a HUGE @#$% show in some states.

I'll give a personal example:
My wife and I both fall under Tier 1A/B for vaccine administration in CA state. She's a vet, actively doing house calls (relatively high risk). I'm a retired physician, but do some locum tenens work occasionally, so I'm considered a "reserve" to be called up if needed. Most physicians are getting vaccinated at their place of work, but because we are both independent contractors, we do not qualify for that, so both of us this week went to get our first vaccine dose at the SD Health Department. I was THIRD in line when they opened up, there were maybe 10 people behind me. Things were supposed to start at 9:30 (that's a really late time to start something like this), but no one actually got setup and started talking to the healthcare workers in line until 10:00. I pre-filled out the paperwork in advance online, but that didn't matter as they made me fill out everything again, on paper, by hand (clipboard). They asked the same set of questions 3 times, by 3 different people, in addition to having me write answers to them out. After 2 hours, I finally got my shot.

My wife was even less lucky, as she worked late the night before so she went later in the day. She was FIRST in line when she got there, but because she was "on the wait list" had to wait till the very end of the day till after everyone that had an appointment had a chance to be vaccinated. In 4 hours, she watched 8 people TOTAL go through the doors and come out to get vaccinated. After the appointments were up, she was 2nd in line on the wait list, and it still took over an hour for her to get her shot.

I have done some vaccine clinics, and usually we process a thousand or more per day, per site, when we do them. What I saw was an unacceptable pace for vaccination. And this is the HEALTH DEPARTMENT, an entity that routinely administers vaccinations and should have this running like a well-oiled machine, since vaccine was first delivered in SD county almost a month ago.


By contrast, my father is 77 and in good health. He lives in a state on the opposite side of the country. They have vaccinated 100% of their healthcare force over the past month, and are now moving on to seniors and those with chronic medical conditions. The pace of vaccine administration has been substantially higher.


The difference is how states are implementing their vaccine administration. YES, the vaccine could be delivered faster to states, but some states have not planned their vaccine administration out at all and are still sitting on a substantial number of doses.


IMO, the National Guard should be administering vaccine. They are setup and trained for "humanitarian relief" and could accelerate deployment of the vaccine. The one downside to this is that the National Guard is controlled 100% by states and called up by state governors, not the federal government. So we will be at the will of individual governors to actually implement a plan like this.

Ridiculous. I hope you and your wife get it as soon as possible.
The governor in our state just deployed the National Guard to help with getting vaccines into arms, starting tomorrow.

 

[TEG]

https://twitter.com/PunchbowlNews/status/1347604167355936772

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Oklahoma Rep. Markwayne Mullin, Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, Texas Rep. Michael Cloud and California Rep. Doug LaMalfa were captured unmasked and gathered closely together. They all refused the masks.

A congressman who voted against certification tests positive for Covid-19.

The New York Times @nytimes · Jan 7
Rep. Jake LaTurner, Republican of Kansas, tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday night, after he spent the day participating in a failed effort to stop Congress from certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Members of Congress possibly exposed to COVID-19 during siege on Capitol

...The attending physician to members of the U.S. Congress has advised lawmakers to get tested for COVID-19 due to possible exposure during the siege on the Capitol.
MORE: Capitol Hill riot could prove to be COVID-19 superspreader event, experts say
The potential exposure may have occurred when several members of the House and their staffers were in "protective isolation" in a large committee space for several hours with an individual who was infected with the virus, Dr. Brian P. Monahan wrote in a memo to lawmakers and staff Sunday...

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Went on a plane a few weeks ago and needed a negative test result within 5 days prior to the flight. In Philadelphia it proved nearly impossible to get a test without jumping through tons of hoop and having a referral.

Got back and want to take a test to make sure I was still negative. Went out to the suburbs and a nice man in a lab coat in a church parking lot stuck a swab in my nose then called me 12 minutes later with a results. Easy peasy. Starting to see why this thing is crushing poor minorities. If I were symptomatic(and a poor uninsured black man), I'd only have the emergency room and they'd certainly tune me away without a test.

Amazing to me the military has had essentially zero role in this whole pandemic, except of course to set up massive nation guard command centers in my neighborhood during BLM protests. The logistics of this response is utterly laughable.

 

[EVCollies]

I'm not one that likes the public lime-light, but my wife has been sharing her experience on social media, and did push the CA Vet groups to push for some changes (vets were in line with the general public - all other states had them with health care providers because they are considered "essential").

There are some private groups that are going to be doing drive-up vaccination for healthcare workers (UC SD), which should accelerate the pace significantly.

We are only allowed to administer vax only to our employees or those "closely aligned" to our system, as defined by the state. Thus some FIre/EMT/Police are able to get vax through us, others must go elsewhere. One wonders why it would matter?