Tonight President-elect Biden announced that he would be announcing his vaccination plan tomorrow. For your convenience, we here at the Balloon Juice bunker have gotten a copy of the plan, codename Operation Lollipop, and it is our distinct honor and privilege to bring it to you now. Full disclosure: contrary to initial reports, Dave Anderson was not injured in obtaining these plans. Several Bothans, however…
Operation Lollipop
- Roll up sleeve.
- Person administering the vaccine swabs your upper arm.
- Fill syringe with vaccine.
- Stick needle in arm. (Special sequel instructions for Governor Ron DeStupid in Florida: ensure that needle is attached to the syringe first!)
- Push the motherfucking plunger on that syringe! Do it for God, Mom, Apple Pie, the Bald Eagle, and Randolph Scott!
- Remove needle from arm!
- Apply Band-Aid.
- Roll down sleeve.
- Observe patient for 15 minutes to ensure no adverse effects. (Special sequel instructions for Governor Ron DeStupid in Florida: these adverse effects may be indistinguishable from the normal behavior of Floriduh! Man, please refer to a medical professional if necessary.)
- Provide vaccinated person with their proof of vaccination.
- Issue vaccinated person a lollipop.
- Repeat 350 million times.
- Declare victory, put on aviator sunglasses, peel out in corvette.
Open thread!
Just to be on the safe side, because it is American and it is 2021:
- Peter Hastings did not write this post, nor did he author President-elect Biden’s vaccination plan, he did write the episode of Mindy and Buttons for Animaniacs Season 1, Episode 6.
- This is SATIRE!!!!!
On The Road – Steve from Mendocino – Paris 9/10
smedley the uncertain
Good night
Adam L Silverman
@smedley the uncertain: Catch you on the flip.
sdhays
That’s good to hear, but did that Richard Mayhew guy make it?
Roger Moore
FWIW, I was told that it was important to move the arm in which I was injected; this is supposed to reduce the chance of extreme soreness. The nurses specifically recommended the chicken dance. I would recommend putting it on infinite loop, but that would be too cruel to the people who have to work in the observation area all day.
Mousebumples
I vote for an extra stimulus payment to anyone who gets the vaccine (*both doses). Extra money to people who need it, and extra financial incentive to follow through.
And, in seriousness, seems like a good 20-something job. I got vaccine trained on college (age 22 or so), and while it was related to my pharmacy profession, this cohort seems likely to be in need of a good paying job and able to move around for X months to vaccinate the country.
I’m looking forward to hearing Biden’s plan tomorrow!
piratedan
so I expect we’ll soon see an executive order mandating an increase of PPE, additional dosages of vaccines, ventilators and lollipops.
BR
Do you think we’re in for a rocky week until uncle Joe gets to put his plan in action?
I am surprised at the amount of precautions the administration is allowing to be put into place, and that makes me think they’ve got things under control. Does that seem right, or are there wrinkles in their plan, like the new WH announcement of a “sendoff” event in DC?
piratedan
@sdhays: aka Red 5…. no he didn’t.
Raoul Paste
Just a tad giddy about the vaccine, eh?
Adam L Silverman
@sdhays: We can neither confirm not deny his involvement at this time…
Mousebumples
@Roger Moore: General vaccine rule. Do push ups, lift soup cans, do jumping Jacks (or at least the arm half).
Some vaccines are more prone to causing muscle soreness. This appears to be one of them.
Adam L Silverman
@Mousebumples: Since we’re waiting on a whole bunch of contract awards and go orders for projects, if they ask people to sign up to get paid to administer vaccines, I’m going to sign up. I’ve got a combat lifesaving certificate. I’m pretty sure if I can put an IV in, I can give someone a vaccination.
Adam L Silverman
@BR: Yes, yes we are.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I’ve been informed by a medical professional, if you begin to grow a new toe or a tail, that is NOT one of the vaccine side effects.
LAO
Roll out of the vaccine has been an absolute clusterfuck in NY. Anything has to be better than the mess Trump has left state and local governments.
Wag
Sure its satire, but dammit, it just might work!
A whole hellava lot better than the current Scott atlas authored plan
BR
@Adam L Silverman:
I see. I had hoped the crazies had given up given that they’re being rounded up and realized there was no path to overturning the election anymore…
JaySinWA
@Adam L Silverman: Vaccines don’t go in veins so you need to reverse the IV training.
Roger Moore
@BR:
The crazies are insane by the “keep doing the same thing and expecting different results” standard.
piratedan
@Adam L Silverman: Are you thinking that despite the head of the snake supposedly being lopped off, that many of these groups are gonna go ahead and dip their collectives toes in the water or do you believe that instead of focusing on DC, that they will now focus on potentially easier targets, i.e, state capitals will get the attention?
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: me too. My parents are scheduled for dose 1 on Monday. Such a relief.
eta: oops. Wrong comment response. Time for bed. Goodnight all.
Adam L Silverman
@piratedan: I don’t think the head of the snake has been lopped off at all.
dmsilev
What about the microchips? I was promised microchips.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sdhays:
Nope, he ded
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: I took my Mom for her first dose this past Monday.
dmsilev
@LAO: California as well. Root of the problem seems to be that the county-level public health agencies are just absolutely overwhelmed.
WaterGirl
As long as we are talking about vaccinations… I will remind you guys that there’s a link in the sidebar to a thread where you can post when you get either or both shots. It’s called I Got the Shot! – simian to the I Voted! thread in the fall. You get stickers and everything.
Do Something!
Call Your Senators & Representatives
Directory of US Senators
Directory of US Representatives
Letter to Elected Officials – Albatrossity
Letter to Elected Officials – Martin
I Got the Shot!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Anderson’s ok, but he’s no Dick Mayhew.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: that’s excellent
piratedan
@Adam L Silverman: by that are you saying that Trump is simply a means to an end and that certain groups were happy to use him but can proceed just as fine without him or that other people in his orbit are actually the movers and shakers and if so, who do you think that is?
CaseyL
@Adam L Silverman: Is the Head of the Snake at least in someone’s sites? (Note I’m not asking who it is, just whether it’s being hunted.)
Adam L Silverman
@piratedan: Trump essentially provided the social behavioral permission for these people to come out from under their rocks and act with impunity. Gonna be real hard to put that evil genie back in the bottle.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
God, Animaniacs was amazing. I didn’t appreciate it when I was a kid, but I do now. I never understood what their target audience was, though. Most of the witty references and jokes I feel would’ve went over most kids’ heads
Mary G
I got onto a clinical trial out of the desperation that switching to an HMO had caused. They gave me a little box. When I opened it the next morning the sight of 100 syringes freaked me out, like I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO STICK ALL THOSE IN MY BODY. Turned into an every day habit within a week.
@Adam L Silverman: Do you think the states are doing enough to protect their capitols? That has me worried. Many fewer defense helpers available. Probably not that hardened. Lots of inside help.
I hope the sight of all these “patriots” being taken in by the FBI will deter the ones who think like the rich families who came out with the family to watch the battle and have a picnic at the start of the Civil War, but it seems we’ve picked the low-hanging fruit and will be left with the smarter ones like Tim McVeigh who don’t do so much stupid shit as damage.
BigJimSlade
And repeat 3 weeks later!
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: I have really no idea what any specific state is doing.
BigJimSlade
@?BillinGlendaleCA: well as long as you (not me, though!) get a new toe or tail out of the deal, all’s good.
dmsilev
@BigJimSlade: Johnson & Johnson has said they expect to have results on their Phase 3 trial in a week or two, and that’s a single-dose regimen. Makes the logistics much easier, so let’s hope for good news.
catclub
or is it?
BigJimSlade
@dmsilev: the next time you get mis-identified as someone’s lost golden retriever, you’ll realize…
catclub
Suppose some group takes over a state capitol. Then what? I think that will be a dog that caught the car problem.
Mary G
Ted Cruz staffers lower the boom:
VeniceRiley
@dmsilev: They’re also runnung a 2 dose trial. When they launched that it made me wonder if they’re shooting for an efficacy bump.
Hope NovaVax also turns out positive!
jonas
*Finally* got an appointment for a vaccine shot next week. That is, if I don’t show up and they tell me they’ve run out or something. This whole thing is fubar. The county has vaccinated probably fewer than 10% of the people who qualify at this point. The county supervisor claims the state isn’t shipping enough doses and local hospitals and pharmacies aren’t coordinating well enough; the state says it’s not their fault, the feds are being too stingy; the feds say, hey go fuck yourself you’re getting all the doses you qualify for. Given who we’re dealing with here, my instinct is to go with “the feds are fucking this up,” but who knows? At this rate, we won’t see schools back in session, restaurants and movie theaters back open, or me having dinner parties until next summer at the earliest. Fuck that.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I listened to the speech, and I just kept thinking two things: “My god, this is ambitious” and “Thank god we got the Senate.”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
Who do you think the head of the snake is? Several GOP MoCs? Trump himself? There was an interesting thread earlier today about a journalist who had been monitoring the online chatter for months and was there on 1/6. She thinks this was an example of a “stochastic coup” and that we’re going to discover that there were many different groups, working at crossroads, there was no overarching “plan”, and there was very little if any direct communication with the WH/Congress and the insurrectionists. What do you think of this assessment?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@piratedan: 100 million lollipops in 100 days!
A.J.
Adam I like this new genre for you
(and yes I’ll be very excited for your next piece on cultural disintegration / rehabilitation for my adopted home country)
Martin
Adam, I’ve been seeing some suggestions that part of the analysis failure is that when we do threat assessments, we tend to treat foreign groups with ex military as a very high threat, but domestic groups with ex military as a very low threat. So yeah, they were talking about storming Congress using all of the guns that they have photos of them holding, assassinating Nancy Pelosi, and starting a race war, but they’re ex-Air Force so it’s all good.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): She was both right and wrong. It was stochastic, but her analysis is based on the stuff she saw. She wasn’t everywhere. She’s got bits and pieces. She didn’t have pics of vids of the initial breach of the perimeter. And she’s not a journalist, nor is she a terrorism analyst. She’s a YA fiction novelist.
You don’t want to read my YA fiction, I don’t want to read YA author’s terrorism analysis.
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: We actually do very little analysis of them. At least within government. For fear of the backlash that happened in late 2008/early 2009 when DHS did an excellent assessment.
Mary G
@catclub: I worry about them executing the highest ranking Democrat they manage to catch, possibly even going to their home or their local Starbucks or other places there’s a weakness.
Ken
@Mousebumples: Why does the exercise help? Spread the dose around so the affected cells aren’t all in a clump?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@jonas: I’m in the general population (group 2) so I had no expectations of getting a vaccine in the next few months anyway. I’ve been thinking I would wait till the new administration was in place and we had an actual plan with actual leadership.
Sounds like I was right to wait.
jonas
Re: impeachment. Is there any way for the Senate to vote anonymously on conviction? It would be 95-5, with 5 Republicans, probably, missing the vote due to mandatory Covid quarantine. It must be deliciously ironic for Hawley, Cotton, and Cruz in particular to be in the unique position of being able to eliminate their most dangerous 2024 primary rival, yet knowing that their [recorded] vote to eliminate him would also take them out of the running.
Delicious!
ETA — well, if it was 95-5 I guess it would be too “anonymous,” but you get the idea…
dmsilev
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Look, the Lollipop Guild was very generous to certain Senators.
jonas
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Yeah, that’s my assumption. I fall under the “essential worker/educator” category, so I’m supposed to get mine now, but until today — thanks to a coworker who tipped me off to a local site with some open appointment slots — I’ve been completely unable to even get web links or phone lines to work.
When my wife or kids will get theirs? Who knows?
Origuy
My housemate got his first shot today (Santa Clara County). He’s In-Home Support Service for his disabled mom. She isn’t quite 60 and I’m not 65 yet, so we won’t be eligible for a while. I drove him to the county building and it only took about a half an hour, 15 minutes of which was observation for side effects. His mom is immuno-compromised, so it would be nice if she could get it early. She has a shellfish allergy and I’ve heard reports that the vaccine can trigger that.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
Okie dokie, thanks!
Have you ever tried writing fiction? You definitely have the national security knowledge that would be useful for informing character motivations, backgrounds, etc
Martin
I have to say, Biden’s economic recovery plan looks better and better the more I look at it.
There’s no compromise given to austerity or trickle down, etc. It just ignores everything that the GOP would call ‘economics’.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I can’t write dialogue.
catclub
@jonas:
I have doubts about that. The GOP people who get elected are true believers.
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: Guessing that’s going to change in a pretty big way starting in 6 days.
catclub
CNN is already starting the ‘Government debt will kill us’ reporting.
mrmoshpotato
12.1. Put bologna in our slacks!
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: I don’t know.
Martin
@catclub: I don’t think so. I think any GOP senator that wants to run in 2024 would realize they’re best off with Trump banned from running for office ever again. You know Cruz and Hawley would twist the knife if they could do it without Trumps supporters knowing it was them.
Another Scott
One for Mayhew. (What happened to that guy, anyway??):
Good, good.
More, please.
I was happy to hear from my dental hygienist this morning that she got her first vaccination 2 weeks ago.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
No state seems to be capable of implementing this complicated damn priority system in a manner that is fast enough to absorb the volume of vaccine being produced. Bending down the R curve will save lives faster than anything else at this point. I think they should just throw in the towel and set up mass 24/7 vaccination centers and just push the stuff out as fast as the shipments arrive from Pfizer and Moderna. With no regard to anyone’s priority list. Maybe hold back 10% or so for the local clinics and hospitals and nursing homes to dick around working through their priority lists like they have been. But push the rest of it out as fast as it arrives, just like with the flu shot. Use big convention centers and such for mass clinics, or big stadium parking lots for drive through clinics, and just run them 24/7 in the big metro areas.
We are capable of pushing out abut 150 million flu shots every fall in about 2 months time. We should be able to do this too. With the flu shot you just go get your shot. No one gives a flip if you are Tier 1b or 2a.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Brian Williams closes his show with: Beware of favorable coverage of Jared and Ivanka in coming weeks. They have just enough friends in our industry to get it. (roughly)
I’m quite surprised, this of course leads into the story about the Secret Service Port-a-Potty and the $150K terlet rental, because Ivanka didn’t want them using her guest towels, if you haven’t seen it yet
Ruckus
@Mary G:
I like the sentence that says “He’s supposed to be a smart asshole…”
Really they have been deceived for a while, he’s always just been an asshole, deluxe version. That means he’s not only an asshole but he works hard to maintain that sheen of asshole.
MoCA Ace
My son got his second dose on Tuesday afternoon before a 12 hour shift at the hospital. Said halfway through the shift he developed a bad headache chills, and body aches. Miserable work night but after a good “days” sleep he was 100%.
He told me not to tell any of the older relatives about the side effect… doesn’t want any of the wussez taking a ride on the old ventilator machine because they are afraid of a sore arm. Kids gonna be all right :)
catclub
That is maybe 6. the other 44?
Ruckus
@Martin:
That’s a good idea, seeing as how their idea of economics is how much can we steal while lying to everyone that we are saving them from prosperity.
Kent
They would all have been much better off with a collective tearing off of the band aid on 11/5 when the election was called. Would have taken all the air out of Trump’s sails. And they might not have lost GA and the Senate either. Don’t ever tell me about strategic GOP genius ever again. They have done exactly two things since 2008. Learn how to obstruct anything and everything with no consequence, and win elections by lying through their teeth. That’s it. The entire GOP since 2008 has only done those two things. Oh…and tax cuts.
jonas
@catclub: Well, if you believe a lot of journalists who talk to these folks on background, almost to a (wo)man, they believe Trump is a goddamn dumpster fire. But they’re spineless assholes who can’t muster the courage to say anything. Witness their 180 degree weathervane pivots in 2015-16 as it became apparent that Trump would win the nomination. If they could convict him anonymously — with 10-15 even more craven asshole cowards providing enough cover for plausible deniability — they’d shitcan him in a heartbeat.
After all, they believe in nothing.
Mary G
Biden also proposes to pay disabled people the same salary as the ableds get. This is huge in the communities I follow. People would be turning cartwheels if they could.
jonas
Wow. I guess the editor was like “The WSJ is *not* going to bigfoot us on this storyline this time!!”
Adam L Silverman
OT question: does anyone know if the returning shows on the various Discovery channels that are supposed to become Discovery+ series will still air on the actual various cable channels? They’ve moved my two bigfoot shows to Discovery+ and I’m not really interested in paying to watch something that I’m already paying to watch, but now seemingly can’t.
MoCA Ace
@Adam L Silverman:
This.
Those fuckers will never change (unless it is to become more violent). I think the only solution is the same one that has worked throughout history. NO… not wholesale slaughter! It will however require real consequences… some jail time, loss of income, and prolonged social stigmatization. Basically shunning them until it is no longer socially acceptable to let their racist freak flags fly. They need to be driven back under their rocks until they die… alone and powerless. We are in for a long decade.
frosty
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Same thing with Rocky and Bullwinkle. Maybe the target audience is the other writers.
Yutsano
Well this news will make at least one of my friends happy. He’s an Army medic. He likes sticking people. No really. He REALLY enjoys it. It would be scary if it wasn’t for the fact that I knew I was safe. I think. He’s in Colorado anyway….
CaseyL
@Adam L Silverman:
That’s a shitty thing to do, but it looks like more and more cable channels are doing similar stuff: setting up their own streaming feed, and giving people the choice to sign up (at an additional charge to the cable fee you’re already paying) or not see their shows anymore.
They’re seeing the “cable package” model die with the rise of streaming services, and are trying to get the jump on it. Of course they’re shafting their current viewers, but since when did TV channels care about that?
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This whole story is a mess starting with the weird Javanka refusing their Secret Service from using the bathroom in their home to these same secret service detail being banned from returning to the Obamas home by the Obama detail because they “left an unpleasant mess.”
BigJimSlade
@dmsilev: that would make things a lot more, well, likely to get done in a timely manner, or at all!
Martin
@Kent: It’s really hard to do something like this without some component of centralized planning and communication.
Ideally you want to tell the public in some form or another ‘you’re getting your shot on Wed’. One reason why starting with things like hospital staff and nursing homes is good is that you have a well defined population that will get a shot on the administrators schedule. Schools are good this way. But using CVS is hard because it’s so hard to balance supply and demand for a vaccine that is very sensitive to removing from storage.
I mean, if you want to coordinate something on this scale, talk to the Registrar of Voters or the county court system, both of whom have a database of everyone in the county, their age, knows how to partition them at a very granular level, and knows how to send them official information.
There’s 3.5 million people in my county, and a vaccine shipment is 7,000 doses, so that’s only 1,000 dosing events. My county was getting shipments of about 35,000 doses so simply schedule everyone for a vaccine on a given day at various locations around the county and pad it by x% for no-shows.
But asking the public to self-identify and self-schedule isn’t going to work. Trust me, I’ve done shit like this.
Brachiator
@Martin:
I think it is okay. A good start. I will be interested in seeing what more he will offer.
I was hoping for something more innovative. I still see that a lot of economists don’t really grasp the full implications of shutting down much of the economy because of the pandemic and what you need to do to get it all going again.
I do like that Biden talked about small business. They really need help.
I absolutely understand that Biden has to talk about creating more manufacturing jobs. This will reassure a lot of people. But it is nonsense. It’s like Trump promising to bring the coal industry back.
Mary G
Everybody who loves good legal writing will enjoy the government’s Brief in Support of Continued Detention of the “Q Shaman” AKA Jason Chansley.
He delivered the evidence himself!
They describe a single Capitol Police officer alone in the Rotunda with 25 or so insurrectionists trying to talk him down. Such bravery.
Tried “paste as plain text” and Notepad to remove the weird formatting. Cleaned it up manually as best I can.
CaseyL
@MoCA Ace: Yes. Stochastic terrorism will live, and die, by the social media.
The GOP needs to be destroyed as a national party, and somehow, some way, we really need to get rid of RWTV. Maybe the rise of streaming services, however much they rip off ordinary consumers (sorry, Adam!) will help with that. I keep hearing Fox News makes money, not so much on its ads, as on its bundling fees charged to Comcast and other carriers. If their current revenue model falls, they’re going to have to move to streaming, too – and I can’t see too many of the current providers wanting to include Fox (much less OANN or NewsMax) in their offerings.
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: Oh fuck. You’re like my wife. Your Netflix front page is like every Bigfoot series they have, isn’t it?
Brachiator
@Martin:
Fortunately, the newer vaccines are not so fragile. A lot of pharmacies and even grocery stores offer flu vaccines. We need to get to the same place with this vaccine.
But I agree with all your main points. I would add that in Los Angeles County I would send health teams into Hispanic neighborhoods. We know down to the zip code where most infected people live.
But in any event I think that things will get better if more of the vaccine is available to states and cities.
Aleta
@Mary G: Thanks! I like this part too:
and this:
burnspbesq
Vaccine distrib in Texas is run by Republicans, so of course it’s a clusterfuck.
Jay
Adam L Silverman
@MoCA Ace: It’s also the connective tissue between having a predominantly to almost exclusively white nominally to devoutly Christian crows of insurrectionists that included white supremacists, neo-NAZIs, neo-fascists, QAnon nuts, and yoga moms who are anti-vaccine and interested in aromatherapy, anti-mask/anti-COVID19 public health measures, etc. Aside from the fact that Trump has promoted all of these conspiracy theories or promoted all of these ideas at one time or another and the fact that the social media algorithms is breaking down the stovepipes between some of these groups by feeding them suggested material that sends them down rabbit holes adjacent to themselves, the connective tissue if you will is they’re all white and they’re all angry – violently, irrationally, extremely angry – over being asked to follow the same rules as everyone else, to be civil and polite in public regardless of what they may believe, to think a little about the public good and do things for the benefit of the entire community, over being told “no, you don’t have special rights and privileges that everyone else doesn’t have”. And every time in American history white people have been told this, a subset of them try to burn it all down.
Adam L Silverman
@CaseyL: Things will not go well if I don’t get my Bigfoot shows…
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: The fact that they’re going hard into an unashamed and unapologetic Keynsian model is a humongous thing!
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: Nope.
Brachiator
@CaseyL:
Cable is losing more and more subscribers. One story I saw suggested that the industry would lose 5 million subscribers in 2020.
But Fox News is included on streaming services such as YouTube TV. Not sure where else.
Mary G
@Aleta: The “fuckin’ a.” – Chef’s kiss.
Leto
I was already sold, but now you’re giving out lolli’s? Seriously, one of the ways that the Red Cross gets people to give blood is that people know they’re getting cookies/juice at the end of it. Bribe people with sweets. It’s simple and it works.
Martin
@Brachiator: Not necessarily. There is a lot of potential for manufacturing jobs in the US, but they aren’t like the old manufacturing jobs, and they’re unlikely to be out in Waterloo, IA.
They’re going to be where there is infrastructure built out, and an educated workforce. Or else the areas that want these jobs need to support taxation and spending to build that infrastructure out.
It’s not going to be iPhones because consumer electronics are too stuck in existing supply chains, but an electrification of US buses could easily be done locally. There’s lots of modernization projects that would result in domestic manufacturing jobs.
Starboard Tack
@Leto:
Chocolate. (Not that Hershey’s dreck.)
Ms. Deranged in AZ
The rollout in AZ is frigging ridiculously bad. My eldest doesn’t qualify even though she has severe asthma. My ex in-laws are in their 70s and ex-MIL is immuno-compromised, but they don’t qualify either. However their son a man in his early 50s who is perfectly healthy but happens to be a federal law enforcement officer who does nothing but white collar crime AKA is a complete pencil pusher does qualify to get the damn vaccine. Makes no sense.
Starboard Tack
@Martin:
This. Local 3D printing can provide intricate, precise, low volume parts for upgrades and modifications. Get the raw materials from as close as possible. Avoid shipping finished goods. It’s like the original model of the industrial revolution, only targeted. Build the plant as close to the raw materials and market as possible.
The Moar You Know
I live in California. I suspect I’ll die of old age before getting Covid vaccine. Our governor has somehow managed the very difficult trick of making the current horrific situation with vaccine distribution much worse.
MoCA Ace
@Adam L Silverman:
Well… yeah
Adam L Silverman
I’m going to rack out. Catch everyone on the flip.
Mary G
Interview with officer Michael Fanone who was dragged down the Capitol steps by the insurrectionists:
Love him.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin:
Sounds kinda commie to me. Just let the Free Market handle it, the invisible hand will give the shots. Just use tax cuts as the incentive. See, problem solved.
Sincerely,
The Republican Party.
MoCA Ace
@Adam L Silverman:
So we need to reign in our social media overlords… we are fucked. How the hell do the majority of Americans, and we are the majority, apply social pressure to these fuckknuckles when they are trapped in their MAGA bubbles?
ETA: I was going to make a joke about option number one not looking so bad after all but I just can’t.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator:
Disagree, what’s the percentage of folk that get the flu jab? This is quite different, we need to have as high as a percentage getting the jab as possible, it won’t work through traditional channels.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
Long Beach, California is rolling out its vaccine, and is using the Long Beach Convention Center as a central point for vaccination. Other city mayor’s are starting to get the ball rolling.
Governor Newsom has stumbled, but state and local health officials need to get their heads together and work this shit out. I heard on the news that my city does not currently have enough vaccine to get more people the jab even if health officials had a good plan in place.
Mary G
Glad they’re following the money. Link goes to Yahoo News.
patrick II
Earlier today I saw a MAGA being interviewed. He said “Donald Trump, do you know what the J stands for? Genius”.
Tonight on NBA Ernie Johnson introduces himself and says to Chuck and says: but you can call me E.J. Do you know what the J stands for?
Chuck: Genius!
That’s right.
danielx
Sounds like a reasonable plan to me.
Reasonable. That’s such a nice word after four years of unreason.
Jay
Ms. Deranged in AZ
@Brachiator: They are using Cardinal Stadium in the West Phoenix Valley, drive through only by appointment. Appointments are windows of time (e.g. 10 pm to 1 am) and they’re running 24/7. But you have to qualify to get an appointment and as I said in my earlier comment doesn’t seem like very many people in the general public qualify. Meanwhile more and more people around me are testing positive. Thankfully not people I’m in physical contact with but still it’s worrisome that the cases are spreading so fast in Arizona..
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Maybe 49 percent get the flu vaccine. I am not saying that we use only traditional channels. But I am saying that we don’t need to avoid them. Hell, one year they brought a nurse to my job to deliver the flu vaccine. And people still turned it down. But there was excess capacity.
I also said that we should send teams into Hispanic neighborhoods that have large numbers of infected people. That ain’t traditional.
If we can get quantities of the less fragile vaccines, hell, I would use the Americana at Brand shopping center as a vaccination site.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G: Good, I’ve been wondering how all those folk managed to get to DC. Some could easily afford it, many couldn’t.
smike
@MoCA Ace:
Could be that they are in for a long decade, also, too. ‘Cuz people are getting tired of this shit.
Brachiator
@Ms. Deranged in AZ:
It is sad that we have to wait until the official change in government, but I am hopeful that Team Biden will get the vaccination program moving at a faster pace. And I think it a good sign that some local officials are trying to get more people vaccinated.
Yutsano
@Leto:
Heh. It really is that easy to keep a military man happy. :P
The Moar You Know
@Brachiator: Newsom just put every 65+ retiree in the state in front of teachers and essential workers, people who are getting exposed every fucking day to this shit. On what planet does that make sense? Yeah, they’re more likely to die if they get it, but they’re far less likely to get it because they’re not getting exposed like our workers and teachers are. I would say this is sheer craziness, but as a former resident of SF who lived under his disastrous mayorship I know that Gavin has an end goal in mind – he wants the presidency, so he’s pandering for votes. It’s what he’s always done. I knew he’d end up being a fucking disaster as governor because he’d revert to form, and he’s coming through on that promise at the absolute worst time possible.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator: The problem with the traditional approach is that you need centralized record keeping, especially with a 2 shot vaccine. You also need to find people who’ve not had the jab and see why they haven’t.
The Americana would be a shitty location, entrance and exit sucks on Brand and Central. The Galleria parking lot would work better.
Kineslaw
@burnspbesq: The LTC portion of vaccine distribution in Texas is a a clusterf***, but my county has been doing a decent job and Texas is one of the better states in terms of percent of vaccine actually in arms.
It should be noted, the LTC part is the responsibility of CVS/Walgreens and the federal government.
Jay
Brachiator
Again, a lot of this stuff reminds me of the old TV series “24.” I keep wondering if there were any law enforcement people in on the conspiracy who are now trying to cover their tracks.
And yeah, I wonder about the money trail. Where might it lead?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@The Moar You Know:
Bullshit, no he did not. Myself and another commenter provided copies of the rollout schedule in a previous post. The 65+ age group and teachers ARE IN THE SAME GROUP.
Ruckus
@Martin:
VA appointments are made in groups of six – that many shots in a vial. I was told Monday that I could go and wait for 5 others to show up as walk ins and get a shot. I’m trying to make an appointment but officially they are saying no on under 75. But the person I talked to at the clinic giving the shots said nothing about age, appointments and walk ins get the shot. I was told that if my primary requests an appointment I can make one. I’m waiting for an answer.
Jay
@The Moar You Know:
if you followed the stats, 14/30 year olds would be manditorally
the first up, as they are the superspreaders.
the whole Idea of giving it to the aged, is that they are most likely to overtax the ER’s, ICU’s and most likely to die.
Freeing up space for the 14/35 that with basic care, that will mostly survive.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
You made this point before. Newsom is not the only governor doing this. He is late to make this change. And some other communities are finding that they are getting the vaccine to more people by simplifying the criteria for selection.
So, the short answer to your question. Apparently on this planet, it is making a lot of sense.
sab
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Same thing in Ohio. Teachers and over 65 are in the same group, behind congregant living olds and their caretakers. ETA and frontline hospital workers.
These seem like sensible choices. You can’t get urban public schools open safely if the teachers aren’t safe, and if the kids’ grandparents aren’t safe. A lot of urban public school families are multi-generational. Parents work and grand-parents babysit after school. Nationally, 80+% of Covid deaths are in the 65+ age group. Probably also true of rural schools.
Aleta
about the photographer Bob Adelman
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
My mother lives in Texas and just got an appointment for both shots. We will see how it works.
I am getting deluged with text and phone messages from Kaiser because I have been late in getting some prescription refills. I wonder how easy it would be to do something like this for the vaccine.
Whatever we do with this vaccine, traditional or nontraditional, there are ways to get it done.
Also, the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, currently in testing, is single dose.
ETA. I was half joking about using the Americana at Brand. King Taco, McDonald’s and In and Out might be sufficient. More seriously, I am following what they are doing in Long Beach.
cain
and for anti-vaxxers and GOP assholes it starts with
cain
@Ms. Deranged in AZ:
It makes perfect sense – the GOP is in charge and they worship the the blue – blue lives matter so they go first.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator: For its patients Kaiser is very centralized, but for anything else you need government providing that centralization, you can be hit and miss here.
Aleta
@sab: It seems like if older people are the most likely to be hospitalized with covid, or the most likely to have longer hospital stays, then reducing their infection rate preserves hospital resources for others, reduces overload on nurses, and would reduce secondary deaths. (I think (not sure) that’s the term for people who die of heart attacks, etc. because hospitals or ambulances are overloaded.)
The projected number of 400,000 deaths by February doesn’t even include secondary deaths, and we may never know the real total.
Chetan Murthy
@sab: It was a nice idea to reopen schools. Really, it was. It doesn’t work unless there’s negligible community spread. Which means, everywhere in the US, it’s not safe to reopen schools. And that includes primary schools and daycares: even younger children transmit covid efficiently: this we now know, from a number of studies. Der Spiegel had a survey article about it a while back. And the situation is even more dire for high schools and college: there, it’s clear that where they go in-person, spread skyrockets in the surrounding community.
So sure, whatever, teachers go after or with 65+ folks. Whatever. It doesn’t matter: you STILL can’t reopen schools until you get most of the kids vaccinated.
People need to stop trying to make fetch happen.
ETA: whereas, inoculating the old WILL save lives. WILL prevent the overload of our medical system.
sab
Ohio’s vaccine roll-out beyond hospitals and nursing homes seems like a potential clusterfuck, but we will see.
Certain pharmacies have been annointed. Apparently by their big parking lots. Sign-up depends on the individual pharmacy’s rules. Some Call us on Wednesday. Others don’t call us until Saturday.
Primary care physicians have been left completely out of the information loop.
County health had a sign up for information. Since they don’t seem to know any more than I read in the paper, I don’t know how useful that will be.
I do blame the Feds, because DeWine and Husted have been pretty honest about how fucked this is. And I don’t share their politics, but those two guys do know how to organize.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Aleta: True, except we’ll probably hit 400k deaths by the end of the weekend.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Chetan Murthy:
I’m stealing that.
Chetan Murthy
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It’s something the youngs say, apparently.
Martin
@The Moar You Know: You kind of have to do that, for two reasons:
An age-based system is the most straightforward to implement and the hardest to cheat. It may not be the most efficient in terms of priority, but that’s basically impossible to do unless you can easily delegate that out (which you sorta can).
As someone on twitter noted, trying to prioritize based on exposure risk (instead of death risk) is like the trolly problem, but you keep tying more people to the tracks while you’re deciding which track to go down.
If you can delegate, as they did with hospitals, then you can just hand them a bunch of vaccine and let them figure it out because they’re qualified to do that, and because the employer is qualified to vaccinate their employees. That’s why I’ve been arguing for schools to get open first because they’re the same way – they know exactly how many doses they need, and they have the ability to organize their distribution and the capacity to administer it. Basically, they take a LOT of burden off the organizing administration.
With almost all vaccines this is easy to do. But the Pfizer vaccine is such a pain in the ass to store and administer that you can really only do that if you have a certain scale, and that creates some really nasty logistical challenges.
I mean, if we can administer the vaccine as quickly as it can ship then it doesn’t really matter if we get grocery store workers vaccinated first. So yeah, I support an age based distribution because it should speed things up a lot.
sab
@Chetan Murthy: I am an old. I will be happy to get innoculated, but I can shelter at home pretty effectively. On the other hand, I can do child care if innoculated.
My babysitting sister in law ( same age) can’t shelter at home because grandkids, and her nurse daughter (ICU) can’t work without school and childcare for her kids.
My autistic grand-daugter is lucky because she has a much older sister willing to give up college for a couple of years to care for her. Most families don’t have that luxury. A friend of hers down the street, also autistic, has a single working mother. She has to have school and childcare or they are homeless.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: Except that if you handed my university 60K doses, we’d have 100% vaccination of students and staff in a week.
The question is whether they have 60K doses to spare (they do). We have the ability to store it, we have staff that can administer it, and we can organize the students/staff with relative ease. If the county is struggling, we can help. Further, we can do our own testing following to verify that there are antibodies.
Now, that’s harder for K-12. I don’t know any that can store the Pfizer vaccine.
Prioritizing is a great idea if you can stay ahead of shipments, but if you can’t, prioritize what you can, and just hand out the rest. Find the orgs that can work independently, and do the rest by descending age.
Luciamia
I still want a lollipop. One of those giant, stripey lollies.
sab
A lot of these vaccines aren’t even tested safe for kids. Also in short supply. Let’s innoculate those the kids are most likely to infect and kill by infection, and move on from there.
Chetan Murthy
@sab:
And yet, there is no way to have schools and group daycares, without killing people. Not until kids get the vaccine (or their adult relatives and other people they interact with get it). That’s just the fact today. We all know what the solution is: rent moratoria, income support, so that people like this woman can survive and live decently until everybody is vaccinated. But let’s suppose that that doesn’t happen (b/c after, we live in America, a brutal and indecent place): then what should we do ? I don’t know the answer. But I do think it’s obvious that killing people by exposing them to the coronavirus is the wrong move, not when the vaccine is so close.
I’m 55, and am unhappy but … “content” to wait until whenever-it-is. I’m currently figuring June, hoping that I’ll be free of this house by July 4th. So I’m sure not talking about me. It seems to me that each state and city has to balance many different harms. And the harm of *dying* is the worst one. Sure: once we get thru all the olds (and the immunocompromised, really ill, etc), I can understand various “interesting” prioritizations, based on various social goals and ills and whatever.
But right now, we’re still trying to get all the olds inoculated. A society can be judged by how it takes care of its very old, and its very young. We’re doing a shitty, shitty job, right now, of taking care of our very old. We need to do better.
sab
@Martin: My Governor (DeWine Ohio) Prioritizing is all well and good, but if you have extra vaccine please stick it in somebody’s arm before it goes bad. I wholeheartedly agree.
Chetan Murthy
@Martin:
Is this actually true? There’s a lot of conflicting information out there on this. For instance, this Chron article: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Busy-phone-lines-and-crashed-web-sites-Bay-Area-15872091.php
about senior struggling to get slots to get vaccinated, including pretty old folk (82yo). I read elsewhere that counties just don’t have enough shots, and the Feds eppear to not be shipping them. It’s hard to tell what’s going on.
I do agree, that if there are shots not making it into arms, then they need to just open up the criteria and stop being picky about whose arms they’re putting the shots in.
But at least in the Bay Area, for whatever reason, it seems like we’re still limited in our ability to get shots into arms.
sab
@Chetan Murthy: I think we are on the same side of this argument, except for the extremely limited vaccine doses available
ETA limited vaccine availability is the problem
ETA My dad with dementia (age 96) got his. That keeps his nurse’s aide safer. She didn’t want hers. Whatever. I think bad choice but it was her choice.
Chetan Murthy
@sab: Yes. Just to be clear, I’m more than happy to wait until all the front-line workers: postal, grocery, delivery, pharmacy, bakery, retail, workers are all vaccinated, before I take my turn. That’s why I’m figuring June (and even that might be optimistic).
sab
@Chetan Murthy: Actually I was adamantly opposed to reopening schools until it was moderately safe. Lose a year and the kids will survive and catch up.
I am all over the board in comments on this thread. Easy to put off schools for a year. Kids will catch up. Single parents needing to work while kids are in school. That is a different problem. Homeless.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy: ??????????
Felanius Kootea
Los Angeles will open Dodger Stadium as a COVID-19 vaccination site starting tomorrow (changing it from a testing site). By next week, they think 12,000 people a day will be vaccinated there, with more mass vaccination sites slated to open up.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin:
You’re making the assumption that everyone will take the vaccine that’s offered, since it’s being given under an emergency use authorization, you probably can’t mandate vaccination.
Felanius Kootea
@?BillinGlendaleCA: A non-clinical colleague at Vanderbilt U got the vaccine because many of the hospital staff slated to get it opted not to receive the vaccine and the University was not about to let those doses go to waste.
raven
@Felanius Kootea: That’s why they expanded 1a in Georgia to 65 and up. Half the health care workers are not getting it.
Sebastian
@catclub:
Getting out might prove much more difficult than getting in.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: Orange county definitely does.
The state overall has only administered ⅓ of the doses received. Now, there will be some that can’t be because they are in transit, etc. but that’s another part of the distribution challenge – making sure that number doesn’t climb, because it means you aren’t distributing fast enough. My county has over 100K doses received but not administered.
Now, Disneyland just opened for vaccinations and they’re using Moderna which is much easier to deal with, and that’s a good location to put a LOT of needles in arms. They should be able to do 100K doses a day if they can receive that many and have enough staff. But the physical infrastructure can easily handle that number.
So, I’ll leave out the possibility that they were reserving inventory for them. I don’t know the breakdown of what kids of vaccine have been received.
Down here we’re still having the drug stores doing distribution to senior facilities, and that’s not been great. The drug store plan was Jareds idea, I think. It’s not a terrible idea on its face, but CVS and Walgreens are not exactly renown for having a lot of staff.
TS (the original)
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I am so old – I well remember the 3 shot vaccination for polio. My small town it was organised by the local council (which actually covered a multiple number of small towns). I know my parents got me there at the right time on the right day for each shot.
Brachiator
@Luciamia:
Funny, had not thought about it in years. My pediatrician had this bowl filled with Dentyne chewing gum. Red packaging, to hand out after a checkup, shots, etc.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Felanius Kootea: Once its under regular use authorization, employers probably can require it for employment.
Amir Khalid
Over here, Health Minister Dr Adham Baba has promised that Malaysians will soon be able to register for free Covid-19 vaccinations. Vaccines will begin arriving here by the end of next month, and the first phase of vaccinations will be for frontline healthcare workers. I’ve been told I’ll be a high priority for early vaccination with my age and medical history, but I haven’t heard any details beyond this.
ColoradoGuy
What puzzles me is the delay on US approval of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, which I understand will not even be reviewed until April. Yet this same vaccine is in mass deployment in the UK, to the tune of millions of doses. Are the Brits genetically different than Americans, or is this a deadly example of Not-Invented-Here at the FDA? I am told the Brits speak the same language as the US review board, so I wouldn’t think the documents need to be translated.
The exact same Phase 3 trial data is available to the US, UK, and European authorities, yet they come out with wildly different review timings. What gives? What purpose does delay serve?
Martin
@ColoradoGuy: They’re very different vaccines. The two currently approved in the US don’t give you a weak variant of the virus, they instead trick your body into creating antibodies. It’s a really good approach.
The Oxford vaccine is much better for developing nations – it’s cheaper and it’s easier to distribute, but also less effective. I would argue that the US shouldn’t use the Oxford vaccine – we should focus on the expensive and difficult vaccines because we can.
Chief Oshkosh
@LAO: What about having an erection that lasts for four hours?
I’m not asking if this is a side effect…I’m asking how I can get one of those.
UncleEbeneezer
@Adam L Silverman: I just learned about this backlash the other day when I heard an interview with Dr. Erroll Southers, author of Homegrown Violent Extremism. Hardly surprising but still infuriating the way our country has had good info/reports/plans to address so many problems (right-wing terrorism, global warming, police violence, pandemics) only to have them shut down/ignored because Republicans and White People throwing a hissy fit.
PS- I hope we can still expect a nice deep dive of your thoughts on what Accountability for the past 4 years, should look like, as far as investigations, special prosecutor etc., so we can push our Congress to follow through on that. I know in my own Dem/Progressive circles, even people who were lukewarm about the first Impeachment are fed up and want some real consequences for all of these fuckers.