We can see light at the end of the tunnel.
Vaccines are in the pipeline. We think Fall 2021 can look a lot more like 2019 than 2020.
We are going to go through the suck until a large number of people have either their shots or recover from infections.
A vaccine sitting in a warehouse or a doctor’s office is just a funny looking fluid. It is only valuable when it is in someone’s arm and priming an immune response.
We know that COVID response rates are heavily polarized on partisan lines. A recent article in Science showed that partisanship had a huge valance on behavior independent of actual risk levels:
Using daily data on the reported activities of 1,135,638 U.S. adults collected starting on April 4, 2020, we show that partisanship is 27 times more important than the local incidence of COVID-19 in explaining mobility. Moreover, all else equal, Democrats are 13.1 percent less likely to be socially mobile over time compared to independents, while Republicans are
27.8 percent more likely to be mobile.
We know that partisanship had significant premium effects in the ACA:
Insurers have increased marketplace premiums at higher rates in areas with more Republican voters. In the preferred model specification, a 10-percentage-point difference in Republican vote share is associated with a 3.2-percentage-point increase in average premium growth for a standard plan. A variety of robustness and placebo checks suggest the relationship is driven by partisanship.
We know partisanship has both real world consequences in behaviors that have both real individual and social costs. Partisanship allows people to outsource their thinking to trusted political leaders and opinion coalition merchants.
We know that we need, to use a technical term, a shit ton of people to get vaccinated. We want mass vaccination to happen as quickly as possible as the cost of additional suffering in a three month delay to go from 100 million people vaccinated to 200 million people vaccinated would be significant (the economic costs would be high too).
We know that a good chunk of those people who need to be vaccinated are currently getting their political and social cues from elites that have downplayed the entire coronavirus pandemic.
So when members of the elite political class who have been spewing out “plandemic”, “open-up”, “herd immunity”, “personal responsibility”, “let it rip”, “merely a flu” messaging for almost a year now get vaccinated on camera with a smile and a thumbs up, that is very important new information going to people who won’t listen to liberals or pointy-headed nerds. It is a message that vaccines are not bad, they might be good, and trusted elites trust them.
Roll your eyes privately, but I would rather be in a world with 80% or 90% vaccination rates driven by mass elite hypocrisy that allowed for a right wing permission structure to get vaccinated than a world of 50% vaccination rates and consistent messaging that keeps a good chunk of the US population suspicious of vaccines.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
This front page of the London Times is hilarious: “Christmas Cancelled By Mutant Virus” next to a photo of BOJO (photo)
p.a.
Can we at least hope the deniers, frauds, nutjobs, and their followers have unpleasant (not dangerous) reactions to the vac? Maybe not: the deniers, frauds, and nutjobs could use that for anti-vac propaganda.
Wag
I’m not sure that Mike Pense has the political capital to change minds surrounding vaccine denial. Not even Ivanka has that much power. For the hardcore MAGA crowd, only The Donald has that power, and he doesn’t give a shit one way or the other, so won’t act in any positive direction.
Bobby Thomson
Anecdotally I’ve been seeing that a LOT of people who whined about restrictions already have been infected, so there’s that.
Ohio Mom
So Republicans living in Red areas are paying more for their ACA plans, which will just feed into their hatred of all good things brought to them by Democrats, which will make them even more rabid, and the cycle continues.
Wag
@Ohio Mom: For the GOP this is a feature, not a bug.
Matt McIrvin
Once you get beyond front-line healthcare workers, nursing-home residents and other workers who don’t have a choice to stay home, there’s an increasing gap between “who deserves to get vaccinated” and “who it would be most socially beneficial to vaccinate”. To stop the spread, you probably want to vaccinate the people who behave the most irresponsibly, because they’re potential firehoses of virus–and people who have been carefully staying home and masking should be at the back of the line, since they’re the ones most likely to be willing and able to do it some more. But this is morally frustrating.
(This is, of course, assuming that the vaccines at least reduce the chance of asymptomatic transmission and not just illness–most people assume it will, but this hasn’t been tested for the Pfizer one; I believe there’s some evidence that the Oxford/AstraZeneca one does, which is promising.)
Percysowner
In so many ways the anti-vax movement is so alien to me. I’m old enough that I remember standing in a long, long line on Sabin Oral Sunday, where everyone got sugar cubes with the vaccine because Polio was terrifying. Now hundreds of thousands are dying and people don’t want to stop it. It’s insane.
Cheryl Rofer
Slightly OT, but I have been debunking vaccine fear porn all weekend on social media. For those of you who follow me on Twitter, that wasn’t the half of it.
This woman is one of the developers of the Moderna vaccine. It’s a short thread, but well worth reading and sharing.
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
If you called it a hoax, no vaccine for you. If you refused to implement policies that would have helped your citizens-looking at GOP Governors as a whole-no vaccine for you ?
Matt McIrvin
@Cheryl Rofer: I’ve said this before, but there’s been a popular tendency from the very beginning of the pandemic to attribute every personal or regional difference in the experience of COVID-19 to a “different strain of the virus”, whether there’s any evidence of that or not, and there’s usually not (and the very first outside comment I see in that thread is another one of those). It’s made me suspicious of all new-mutation stories, even the legit ones.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: The problem is that those people are also infecting other, completely undeserving people who they come into contact with.
Cheryl Rofer
@Matt McIrvin:
???ATTACK OF THE MUTANTS!???
Matt McIrvin
@Percysowner: People who are too young to remember a world in which childhood infectious diseases were major causes of death and disability don’t have the visceral feeling for how necessary these vaccines are.
p.a.
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve heard people worry abt the psychological damage the pandemic is doing to young people, which is legit, but jeez generations grew up w polio, rubella, t.b. scarlet fever, typhus, cholera… hanging over their heads. Hell the common 3 day bug with moderate fever could be deadly. Worry abt the disease, counteract it effectively, and the psych stuff should sort itself out.
Soprano2
I know you’re 100% right, but it pisses me off anyway to see people who enabled Trump’s fuckery since March run to get first in line for the vaccine. I hate to say it, but if all the Republicans in the MO state government would get the vaccine publicly and talk about the importance of getting it, many of the Cletuses would probably go ahead and get it too. That would be beneficial to all of us, no matter how much it pisses us off.
Nicole
@p.a.:
We also knew a lot less about mental health back then. It’s entirely possible generations grew up with low level trauma from constant fear of childhood diseases, but we just weren’t aware of it because we didn’t have the language to describe it. I think a lot of attention should be paid to mental health, even after this is over. I think we’re gonna be a nation of PTSD.
Soprano2
@Cheryl Rofer: Yeah, I’ve thought the panic about the “new” variation of COVID discovered in the U.K. was way overblown.
Soprano2
If I didn’t know my husband and I both had COVID, I would think we had completely different illnesses! I had sniffles and mild body aches along with tiredness and loss of taste/smell. He had periodic cough and extreme fatigue. Neither of us ever had a fever. That’s what’s so pernicious about this disease, it’s not immediately identifiable by the symptoms except the one I got, loss of taste/smell. From what I’ve read, many authorities now consider that as good as a positive test for COVID.
Nicole
David, I agree with you about the most important thing been getting the largest number of people vaccinated, but it doesn’t mean I have to like GOPers jumping the queue. I get it, but I don’t like it.
On the bright side, my best friend, who works in a long-term care facility for the elderly, is likely getting her first shot this week. I’m so, so happy for her. She and her husband are currently staying with her in-laws and her in-laws are both in their 90s so it’s good for her both at work and at home.
debbie
Still ticks me off that Rubio was vaccinated.
sab
I am hoping this stampede of high ranking Republicans to cut in line to get the vaccine will convince their followers that it’s a good idea. Rupert Murdoch one of the first in the world to get it after approval.
Those idiots are still out there endangering the rest of us so the sooner they get vaxed the better for everyone.
My 96 yo dad’s nursing home is scheduled for Dec 29. I am glad he is getting it, and thrilled that his nurse’s aide will get it. She has been risking her life for almost a year to take care of him. And she is the center of her own family. So if it goes as scheduled, by mid February she will finally be safe.
dmsilev
@Cheryl Rofer: My parents, who have been very cautious and responsible and also fairly well-read about the virus, were freaking out about the “new strain” over the weekend. Had to talk them down off a ledge.
Having actual virologists as colleagues is helpful from time to time…
Cameron
I grew up overseas, so I’ve been getting vaccinations since I was a little kid. It is infuriating that the loud denialists need to get treated so that their followers will do likewise. It would be nice (although counter-productive) if they got called out right before getting injected: “Why were you saying just a month ago this was all fake?”
Wag
@Cameron: Force them to confess their sins in public and with cameras running before giving them a shot, then broadcast their confessions in a continuous loop on Fox, Newsmax, and OAN
sab
@Soprano2: My stepson and his fiancee both have “mild” cases of Covid. He is in his mid-thirties, and nothing in his life before has ever put him in bed exhausted for two weeks.
Pete Mack
I disagree on entirely selfish grounds. The more people who are initially skeptical of the vaccine–or simply unmotivated–the sooner I can get it. I am pretty far down the list as it stands.
Mike J
The way to get Republicans to take the vaccine is to tell them we’re not going to give it to Republicans.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Unfortunately we likely to end up with booth, most likely after the Conservative Elite get their shots they will go back to screaming it’s all a hoax.
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: “The food is disgusting–and such small portions!”
MomSense
My head says you are right and that we in the sane world have to AGAIN, turn the other cheek because it is the right thing to do and because vaccinating as many as possible is good for all of us. My heart says that every GOP FUCKER should wait until the very end to get the vaccine since they have been actively trying to kill us for months. That chicken shit scripture quoting reading comprehension challenges FUCKER Rubio got a vaccine before a single health care worker is a travesty.
I’m sick of being exposed, getting tested, and fighting with my employers to quarantine so that I don’t infect clients who were hanging on to life by their fingernails before the pandemic. I miss my kids. I am exhausted from the panic and insomnia because I’m worried about getting my elderly mom sick. And I realize that I’ve got it good compared to so many.
The thing that really burns me is that Republicans are never held accountable for their treachery. I made the mistake of checking Twitter last night and everyone is mad at Pelosi for the “stimulus”. Meanwhile that evil ass sociopath FUCKER McConnell again gets away with actual mass murder.
zhena gogolia
@Wag:
Haha, I like it.
Peale
I’m a little worried that after the front liners and nursing home patients get their mandated vaccines, we are going to find that far fewer people are going to voluntarily be inoculated than is hoped. I need to get a new set of friends, that’s for sure. These aren’t “The Virus is a Hoax” people. But many of my friends have decided that there hasn’t been enough “science” going on to please them. They have decided that they are their own vaccination experts and until the trials are designed to meet their criteria, they’d best wait. So we have about 40% of the population who won’t take it because of various right-wing inertia. And another 20-30% who are pro-science – just not THAT science and THAT data. I’m amazed at the number of friends I have who would rather “risk it” than deal with a potential 48 hour period where they feel miserable after a shot. And I’m a bit worried that it’ll turn out that there will be guidance that people suffering from XXXX rare medical condition shouldn’t get inoculated that most of my friends will come down with a “mild case of” XXXX, just like they all came down with undiagnosed cases of mild lactose intolerance and mild celiac disease.
narya
I’m juuuust old enough to remember either actually GETTING some of these illnesses (mumps, rubella, HPV) or getting vaccinated (polio, measles). And my sister died because a vaccine wasn’t handled properly–i.e., she wasn’t protected–so I am all about this vaccine. I am only hoping that the deniers’ denial lasts long enough for me to get vaccinated. And I would rather prisoners be in line ahead of me, much as I dearly want to be able to go out again.
Peale
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yeah. My mom was telling me about an interview she listened to with a Wisconsin State Senator who wants to make sure that the vaccine isn’t going to places where it doesn’t help people (hint, hint, Milwaukee is full of such places in the state). If you’re a city dweller in a state controlled by the GOP, you’re pretty much going to be on your own if you’re not vigilant. Don’t let your elite get their shots. They are going to walk away ASAP.
xjmuellerlurks
I was wondering how the “excessive” use of medical treatment due to covid would affect health insurance rates. It appears that we’ll start seeing them now. This seems to be a forgotten component to the plague as I’ve never seen anything about this in the MSM. Will rates rise permanently or adjust back down (hahahaha) eventually? What effect will there be on medical treatment charges and will they be permanent? Is this the cost of not following simple rules for preventing the spread of covid?
Kirk Spencer
@Nicole: re it affecting previous generations, yes.
My father was born in the mid40s. He was the youngest, 1 of 7 to make it to adulthood. He’d have been the youngest of 9 if it hadn’t been for measles and whooping cough. The sister who died at the age of 3, two years older than him, drove a lot of the extended family’s behavior for the rest of their lives. Almost as much as the experience of all the older children of ww2.
debbie
@MomSense:
And even worse, he made it sound like it was the Dems who were responsible for holding up the stimulus’s passage.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Peale: That’s also amazingly idiotic on the GOP’s part since it would still live their state’s economy crippled and virus plenty of chances to mutate into Skippy the Supervius and come kill them.
But I am more thinking they are going to scream at their followers “it’s a hoax” so they will be plenty of anti vacc stuff too. Just look at the Mask nonsense, the Right is welded to Herd Immunity with the same pig ignorance as young earth creationism and the flat earth.
Another Scott
Good post. It’s obvious that it’s a big problem.
I think Uncle Joe’s approach is most likely to work best at the moment: just tell people what to do and why (“wear a mask to protect yourselves and your community”), and get on with it. As satisfying as demands for repentance would be, they won’t work. We have to route around the misinformation, not reinforce the bad memes.
Ignore the kooks and get on with it.
Cheers,
Scott.
Josie
I would like for some national newspaper to keep a front page list of politicians who have been vaccinated with the date that it happened, maybe bolded and in capital letters.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Scott: Yeah, we again are going to have to forego the satisfaction of the rubbing right-wing faces in the dirt. I can live with that, and, what’s more, so will a lot of our fellow humans.
Tazj
My husband has been vaccinated, and I’m relieved about that. He has a couple of serious preexisting conditions, and works at more than one health care facility so I was worried about him. He got his shot at the VA hospital and he said that as far as he knows everyone who works there had the opportunity to get their shot.
I’m hoping my sister and niece get their shots in the next few weeks. My sister works in a facility that isn’t exactly a nursing home and had to get tested herself when she had what she thought were symptoms(she was negative). She works in a home for Catholic sisters and while many are elderly and infirm, some continue to work as teachers, and counselors or hold bible study in the community. Some sisters had the virus and died. Her boss was very ill from it and was hospitalized, but has since recovered. A few days ago, all the residents were tested again and all were negative so I’m hopeful things will improve.
My niece works in a nursing home, and is automatically tested by the facility twice a week. There have been cases at the facility but I don’t know how things are now because I haven’t talked to her or her parents recently.
I hope everyone here who is an essential worker can get a vaccine soon, as it must be so incredibly stressful for all of you and your families.
henrythefifth
I’ve had two conservative “friends” on FB post that they’ve received the vaccine (one w/ the legit vaccine card). Neither are front liners or in a high risk category far as I know. How are people getting this? Guess I’m not surprised it’s gonna skew to the wealthy.
Uncle Cosmo
Which is one facet of the fact that history tends to repeat itself** in 80-90 year cycles: Those who embody the cultural memory that far back – who remember what happened last time a similar situation occurred, why we should do this and not that – are by&large dead, disabled, deranged, or dismissed out of hand. And society has to learn the hard way yet again…
** Or reputedly per one Sam Clemens: History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
sab
@henrythefifth: I am wondering if my oligarch wannabe brother has had it ahead of his frontline relatives, but I am not actually imterested enough to ask him or them.
WaterGirl
@Peale: When those people find out that they can’t go to work without proof of being vaccinated, and their kids can’t go to school without proof of vaccinations, maybe that will change their tune.
kindness
I work in a hospital here in the Central Valley. They told us last week we were going to get some of the vaccines. !st dibs will be the front line physicians and nurses who are ER & ICU. Next will be physicians & nurses who have direct patient care. After that it will be sorted out for everyone else who works in the building. I don’t have direct patient contact so it’ll be a while till my number comes up. That’s OK though. This is how it should be done.
Not sure what metrics they are using for Kaiser members.
Bill Arnold
The downside is that a lot of these people are psychopaths who will use their personal immunity and reduction in personal fear as reason to more aggressively support the mammonite death-for-wealth-increases-for-the-wealthy agenda being pushed by their paymasters. Keep an eye out for that dynamic.
(Trump lost interest in COVID, and in part that’s because he’s personally immune, in part because he lost the election yes and is trying to work out a personal reality where he can believe that he won.)
bluefoot
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yup. They will get their vaccines and continue the grift for money and power by saying it’s all a hoax and not that bad and hamstringing any public health or pandemic relief efforts.
I am not a person that hates easily, but I hate all these sociopathic swine.
Jinchi
I understand your logic, but it’s wrong. You want to vaccinate populations, not individuals and the most irresponsible people right now are encouraging their friends, neighbors and employees to reject vaccines along with all the restrictions on pandemic life. Think of the meat-packing plant CEO’s who fled to the safety of home, while demanding their employees show up at work, sick or not. It doesn’t matter if one anti-vaxxer gets the shot if they encourage and demand harmful behavior in everyone else around them.
The rest of us are watching too. If the worst characters in this pandemic are first in line for the cure, then no-one else will make the effort. This is a recipe for seeing what ‘natural herd immunity’ really looks like.
Ascap_scab
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
BoJo is supposed to hold a news conference today to complain about getting cut off from the rest of the world. What did he think Brexit would do? Stupid ditz.
Joe Falco
@debbie:
Well, he IS a lying liar who lies.
syphonblue
As someone who’s wife lost a friend to Covid: Any Republican politician running out to get the COVID vaccine after spending the past year screaming it was a hoax while ginning up outrage over any and all mitigation efforts (especially one as simple as wearing a piece of cloth) should spend eternity in hell.
gvg
Don’t forget they need 2 shots to be most effective.
I don’t know why but I expect most of the vaccination resistance to just die out as it becomes more available. Then the last resisters will be the most problematic.
Trump made things worse but antivaxers were already becoming less common because of the measles outbreaks a few years ago. Some of what Trump did was make it obvious he only understood looking good and was trying to influence approval, so some people who aren’t actually antivax are leery of this vaccine, who wouldn’t have been with ANY other President. I think time and lots of people ahead of them in line plus many many doctors, will fix that. Oh and Trump out of office will help too. This has increased the number of people saying wait so it seems more alarming than it really is. IMO of course.
Nancy
@Matt McIrvin: My mother had polio within weeks of my younger brother’s birth.
Our early childhood included getting shots. I was happy to drink the oral vaccine because it didn’t hurt. Didn’t taste good but by that time, I was OK with the yucky taste.
A boy just a year ahead of me in school was one of the last kids to get polio before the vaccine became available. Mom apparently was one of the last adult survivors.
A truly horrifying aspect of surviving polio is similar to what is happening to some Covid-19 survivors, lingering symptoms that impact quality of life and threaten long-term health.
Post-Polio Syndrome is what happens when the overworked peripheral nerves and muscles that were used to stand in for the affected areas get overloaded and start to fail. Observing what happens to someone as that process progresses should be enough to convince anyone of the value of vaccines.
But Jenny McCarthy said something different.
Matt McIrvin
@Nancy: I liked that it was the one vaccination that wasn’t a shot. (Though I think the one they use now is a shot.)
As was going around recently, the practice of giving the oral polio vaccine on a sugar cube inspired the Sherman Brothers to write “A Spoonful of Sugar” for Mary Poppins, after one of them heard about the vaccination process from his kid.
Matt McIrvin
@gvg: Most of our routine vaccination today happens to children through pediatricians, so there’s much better coverage with any vaccine that can be administered that way. You have to be a hardcore antivaxxer to make the effort to refuse your kids’ shots.
Since flu shots have to be re-upped every year in adults, that’s harder–office programs help a lot; for years I got mine through work, after I was convinced by one horrible season in which it kept ripping through the whole office and I got flu or something flu-like twice.
This one is probably going to be more like flu than like measles, in that regard. But it will help a bit if/when a vaccine is approved for children
I agree that there was a lot of early skepticism caused by the fact that Trump was pushing so hard for a miracle cure or vaccine to materialize before Election Day, against the projections of experts that this wasn’t possible.
E.
I have become so pissed off at people that I honestly do not give a shit if they don’t take the vaccine. And yes I know that means one of them might infect me, since I am a lowly essential worker with no money or status who has to face numerous members of the public every day and sell them things, so my category will likely (let’s face it) be the very last group to have access to the vaccine. This last year has hardened me a great deal. I don’t think these people can be reasoned with at all. They can only be vanquished. Let them follow their instincts and refuse to follow science, logic, and reason, and let them refuse to participate in communal actions that raise us all. Fuck ’em.
sdhays
@rikyrah: I think the Lt. Governor of Texas, the guy who said grandparents should die for the economic success of their grandchildren, she get his injection of live coronavirus on TV. We’re STILL waiting for that grandpa to put his life where his disgusting mouth is.
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin: Vaccine distribution cannot hinge on morality in the sense you are talking about, either pro or con. We cannot identify individuals based on their discretionary dangerous behavior. You pick categories based on occupation, etc., that can be verified and controlled. The equivalent of you shouldn’t get treated if you chose to expose yourself to danger is also a lost cause. It’s pointless to go down some roads.
My own guess is that the same people who flouted safety precautions are going to refuse vaccination so that problem will likely take care of itself. Free riders now, free riders forever.
gvg
@Matt McIrvin: Um, parent refusing childhood vaccinations is pretty common. all they have to do is not show up. The vaccination rates in out nation have been dropping alot. Oh and guess what, during Covid it’s gotten worse because people are skipping routine doctors visits.
craigie
There’s that magic number again! Maybe the Q folks can explain that.
germy
bluefoot
@E.: I feel like that Samuel Jackson meme that goes around – they all deserve to die and I hope they burn in hell.
What’s become clear is that to these f*ckers who don’t care about spreading the disease, and those in government who are actively hampering effort to control the disease and blocking pandemic relief is that we are all just non-player characters in their lives. And they get off on suffering.
And to them, the essential work is essential, but the workers are not. We’re all just serfs or tools to be used as far as they are concerned.
It’s so messed up. Essential workers should be provided PPE, large amounts of money, frequent testing, and priority for receiving the vaccines.
Felanius Kootea
@Cheryl Rofer: Kizzmekia Corbett! I wish that the media had given more attention to the NIH scientists from Fauci’s agency like her whose work made the Moderna vaccine possible. That partnership between the NIH and a private company is an interesting model.
germy
No joke.
germy
mali muso
@E.:
@bluefoot:
Come sit by me. I’ve taken to wishing that I still believed in an actual hell (recovering exvangelical here) because the moral scales really do need a healthy rebalancing.
RobertS
I want to get on the list for vaccine doses freed up by anti-vaxxers who refuse.
Ksmiami
@syphonblue: I’ll take them having to look under their cars and over their shoulders for the rest of their miserable lives. I really don’t want any Republicans to survive
Dan B
@Bobby Thomson: My Mike guy’s brother and sister in law *asked if we wanted to come to Christmas Eve or Christmas day. Our answer was “no!”.
*related to the Kochs, in case you were wondering about politics.
Butter emails
@E.:
At least in my state, I’m in the last category to get the vaccine. I’m under 50 with no underlying conditions and have a job that allows me to work remotely.
Ruckus
@Percysowner:
People easily forget history that didn’t effect them directly. Many of us olds remember people suffering from diseases that have been eradicated. Hell in my complex there is a woman my age who has polio and is back to wearing a brace, something I haven’t seen for decades, other than at the VA. But all the vets in the US make up 7% of the pop and our exposure to the few that are missing or have almost useless appendages is slim, even for people using the VA, which is not all vets. It’s just not on most people’s radar. Even the anti vaxers are relatively few in number, if for no other reason, the laws that require vaccination to attend school. We are used to vaccination. The anti vaccination has grown with the trump concept of total insanity – which is his entire political concept, because he is totally insane, which he proves regularly.
Ruckus
@p.a.:
But we knew that there were no vaccines for those diseases. I remember the first polio vaccine back in 1954, I was very young and I remember the horror of polio. But now we have vaccines for a lot of diseases that everyone I went to school with was personally experienced with. We talked about this at my 50th HS reunion. I have the left overs of one of those diseases, others have far worse left overs from others. And it’s coming back to haunt the generation before mine, mine and possibly some of the generation after.
But people forget and a lot of the people complaining about the disease and the vaccinations have not had exposure that my generation, boomers, have. Especially early boomers, like me. But look at history and see the infectious disease horror stories throughout history. Hell there is still a problem with some infectious diseases in some parts of the world. But even with all that a pandemic is rare. But world travel is a reality, hell even in the middle of a pandemic world travel continues, because it has been normalized. The diseases that have remained seem to have a very easy transmission paths, in this case breathing. We’ve made life safer and in doing that we’ve taken out some of the notion of risk, even if not the actual risk.
E.
@Butter emails: It’s that way here too, I’m just assuming that past history will repeat itself and the working poor will be last in line, if not in theory, definitely in practice.
Ruckus
@Nicole:
Low level PTSD seems pretty normal for a lot of people. Give them a bit more stress about normal living and it gets a lot worse. One might even be able to make the case that the morons saying COVID is not a problem are showing signs of PTSD. (I consider PTSD to come in different steps, mild to severe, although PTSD may be the wrong concept if considering the level of the stress as the second word is traumatic. But trauma can be different for different people.) Many people are in denial because some live from the disease as it doesn’t attack everyone the same nor give the same results. Many people are sick, not everyone dies.
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
How would I know then if I have COVID? Or anyone else with a total loss of smell? It isn’t as rare as some think. But my sense of smell has been gone for about 6 yrs now. Have I had COVID for 6 yrs?
I’d say, from personal experience, that just loss of smell might not be all that good an indicator of COVID. Now it might be a good indicator to get a test, if it happens now, but a good indicator of having the disease
Also I hope that both of you are better or getting better!
sab
@Ruckus: Covid loss of taste and smell comes on quickly, and is gone within two weeks. Not like your situation at all, so you can’t use as a test, but it is useful for people with taste and smell.
ETA Especially for those of us in areas where the test takes a week to get results.
Feel unwell? Taste and smell gone? Steer clear of everyone including family until you have your test results.
Ruckus
@Tazj:
Amazing to me the VA has started sending me emails about the vaccine and what the procedures and all. I saw yesterday that almost 10,000 people had been vaccinated, VA staff and now they are starting with the most compromised and down the line.